Purpose This study aims to find the determinants of internal and external customer satisfaction of Islamic banks of Pakistan through service quality indicators that are assurance, reliance, empathy, tangibility, responsiveness. Compliance has also been added as a determinant of customer satisfaction. In this study, customers are divided into two groups, internal customers are those who are an employee in the Islamic bank and also an account holder. While external customers are account holders only in Islamic banks of Pakistan. Design/methodology/approach In this study, a quantitative research approach is used for analyzing the behavior of internal and external customers of Islamic banks in Pakistan. The instrument which is used to analyze the study’s data, is a structured five-point Likert-scale questionnaire. The structural model was analyzed with the help of the partial least squares structural equation modeling approach. Findings This study concluded that internal customers of Islamic banking are well aware and have full information and their level of satisfaction is positive toward the bank’s services. While external customers feel satisfied while using the Islamic banking services in Pakistan. Service quality indicators are positively and significantly related to customer satisfaction in the external customer model. On the other hand, some of the indicators are not showing a significant impact on the internal customer multi-group analysis shows a difference of coefficients are insignificant between internal and external customers. Practical implications This study helps policymakers, to understand the behavior of internal and external customers of Islamic banking in Pakistan for creating favorable policies for an interest-free banking service. Originality/value This research study provides an analysis of the customer satisfaction of Islamic banks in Pakistan by dividing Islamic bank customers into two groups (internal and external customers). The purpose for dividing Islamic bank customers into two groups is that this study wants to highlight that external customer’s perception is the same as internal customers or not? Before this study, it is difficult to find single research on this topic, whereas only one study is find-out on the factors that affect internet banking adoption among internal and external customers.

This paper addresses three issues (a) it attempts to estimate whether product and geographical export diversification has contributed to GDP growth during the 1972-2015 period, (b) identify the determinants of export diversification during this period and (c) ascertain whether a structural break in the export diversification-GDP growth relationshi p has occurred after 2000, since when policy of liberalization has been pursued. We find a significant though modest positive association between export diversification and GDP growth during 1972-2015 and some evidence that this relationshi p though remaining statistically significant, however, it somewhat weakened during the liberalization period 2000-2015. We also find that private sector credit and human capital growth and favorable movements in Pakistan's aggregate terms of trade are negatively associated with product export diversification. Export diversification is currently a policy priority; however, the government's emphasis has been geographical-not product-export diversification. Our estimations show no positive significant relationshi p between geographical export diversification and GDP growth. We therefore suggest that incentives should be provided to induce Pakistani exporters to attempt to penetrate global value chain in product areas in which they already have a presence by linking their business strategies to carefully selected leading global market players.

The available literature on sustainable energy use and economic growth nexus yields conflicting conclusions, as the effect can be positive, negative, or insignificant. This research explores the causal link between sustainable energy use and economic growth in G7-countries (Japan, Canada, Germany, Italy, France, United Kingdom, and United States) and E7-countries (Russia, Brazil, Indonesia, China, Mexico, India, and Turkey) countries from 1990 to 2019. We discover that sustainable energy use and economic growth are proportional. Our results show that sustainable energy use positively affects economic growth if E7-countries exceed a specific threshold. It is detrimental to economic growth for the E7 countries' sustainable energy use to fall below a certain threshold. The use of sustainable energy has no significant impact on economic growth, although it does have a positive and noticeable impact in the G7 countries. In order for the countries of the G7 to see positive economic growth as a result of their investment in renewable energy, it is necessary for those nations to surpass a certain threshold in terms of their use of sustainable energy.

Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate the first time ever the effects of overall terms of trade, bilateral terms of trade and main commodity groups’ terms of trade on economic growth. Design/methodology/approach Augmented Dickey Duller and Philips Perron unit root tests and Johensan cointegration test have been applied by using annual time series data from 1974 to 2017. Dynamic ordinary least square and fully modified ordinary least square have also been used to perform sensitivity analysis. Findings The cointegration test confirm the positive long-run relationship between overall terms of trade (ToT) and economic growth. Country-wise results show that ToT with Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, Hong Kong, Japan, Kuwait, Malaysia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, UK and the USA have significant positive effect on economic growth. Conversely, ToT with China and UAE has significant negative effect on economic growth. In contrast, ToT with India, Norway, Saudi Arabia and Switzerland has insignificant effect on the economic growth of Pakistan. Product-wise results indicate that the product group namely, Chemical, Crude Material inedible except fuels, Manufactured and Minerals fuels and Lubricant found to be a significant positive effect on economic growth. However, Beverages and Tobacco, and Machinery and Transport product groups found to be significant negative impact on economic, while Food and Live animals found to be insignificant. Practical implications In general, it is suggested that the beneficial terms of trade are favorable for economic growth. The study suggested export promotion policy for which relationship between ToT and economic growth found positive and import substitution policy is suggested the products found a negative relationship between the said variables. Originality/value This paper is a pioneer attempt to investigate the effect of overall ToT, bilateral terms of trade and the main commodity group’s ToT on economic growth in Pakistan.

The objective of this research is to examine the possibility of higher export level for the countries which have a higher level of competitiveness. The study has taken the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) as a proxy for the level of Competitiveness and the countries are divided into high and low export countries on the basis of export volume. Furthermore, the study also analyzes the relative efficacy of different components’ of competitiveness index. The estimated results based on the binary probability distribution model showed a positive relationship between higher export level probability and level of Competitiveness. This result is consistent with the hypothesis that the economies having higher levels of competitiveness would have greater possibilities of generating higher exports. GCI is considered as most acceptable index for measuring competitiveness level of a country in the globalized economic system. However, realization of importance through empirical investigation is almost negligible, particularly for the developing countries. The results suggest that developing countries should concentrate on enhancing competitiveness level to achieve the goal of higher exports. The result further suggested that the sub-index “basic requirement” is more important for the enhancement of exports and countries should concentrate on improving the pillars of basic requirements for enhancing competitiveness.