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Islamic economics was initially established as a discipline within a noninterest framework to foster equitable and sustainable growth. Its focus on noninterest equality has transitioned to noninterest finance over time. The finance-driven approach needs being reformed as it may not generate structural solutions for the current macroeconomic challenges – including high inequality of income, sluggish growth and high interest rates. This study aims to ascertain whether Islamic economics is progressing in the correct direction by estimating whether noninterest equality or noninterest finance has a greater impact on aggregate income and lending interest rates in three steps.

The first step involves estimating the total effect centrality of income inequality and interest-bearing finance in the economies of the US, the UK and Germany. In the second stage, it is estimated whether the negative impacts of lending interest rates on aggregate income in these nations are exacerbated to a greater extent by income inequality or interest-bearing finance. The third step involves estimating whether income inequality or interest-bearing finance has a greater impact on increasing lending interest rates.

The study presents four findings. First, income inequality has a greater total effect centrality than bank credits in a network of aggregate income, lending interest rates, income inequality and bank credits in the UK and Germany. Second, the rising income inequality in the United States exacerbates the adverse effects of lending interest rates on aggregate income more significantly than bank credits. The slightly declining income inequality in the UK reduces the negative impact of lending interest rate on aggregate income, whereas bank credits exacerbate it. The negative effect of lending interest rates on aggregate income in Germany is converted into a positive effect by a progressively decreasing income inequality, whereas bank credits exacerbate it. Third, the extent of income equality’s alleviating (mediating) impact on the negative influence of lending interest rates on aggregate income intensifies with a greater reduction in income inequality. Fourth, banking credits convert the negative impacts of income inequality on lending interest rates into positive effects in the UK and Germany. They amplify the positive impact of income inequality on lending interest rates in the United States.

The study suggests that students of Islamic economics should focus on studying noninterest equality either no less than or more than noninterest finance to foster equitable growth, which is the most fundamental quantitative goal of Islamic economics.

This study is the first, to the author’s knowledge, to compare noninterest equality of income and noninterest finance using time-varying networks and mediation analysis. The study’s findings are crucial for comprehending the importance of income inequality in Islamic economic research, particularly in relation to its comparative significance with Islamic finance. Such an insight could potentially facilitate the application of the noninterest equality of income as a viable solution to the persistent predicament facing modern economies.

The purpose of this paper is to find out if there is any convergence between the Third Way in Europe and the Conservative Democracy in Turkey in their politico‐economic strategies for dealing with the social question with the thought that both the political identities have come into existence as a consequence of a similar initiative to reformulate their egalitarian cores according to the realpolitik of contemporary capitalism, and uncover the consequences of the so‐called strategies specifically in the realm of welfare and labour policies.

This inquiry has been contextualised into the evolutionary cycles of the socialism → social democracy → the Third Way in Europe and the Just Order → Conservative Democracy in the Ottoman‐Turkish territory. Initially focusing on the first cycle, the paper then turns to examine the second cycle in a comparative and synchorised perspective with the first.

It is concluded that the Conservative Democracy and the Third way have an unmistakable convergence in terms not only of their evolution but also of their strategic policy options to deal with the social question. Their convergence originates in the initiative to find a middle ground between the contemporary capitalism and their egalitarian cores. Such a reconciliative attempt by the both models ends up in a stalemate that triggers recurring conciliative initiatives rather than yield to stable and sustainable policy options which enable their practitioners to deal with the social question in an efficient way.

The paper touches on the general points of convergence between the Conservative Democracy and the Third Way in the political economy of social question. The next step should, hence, be to further this argument by means of specifically dealing with the welfare and labour policies in separate in‐depth research.

This paper is the first in its inquiry as stated above in the purpose and its comparative methodology to deal with this inquiry.

Contextualizing its argument specifically into the role and impact of the traditional political culture on the process of modernization, this paper aims to examine the “culture matters” approach through the two‐century experience of the top‐down modernization of the Ottoman‐Turkish civilization in the realm of state‐labor relations.

The paper makes a comparative analysis of the interplay between the state and craft associations in the Ottoman Empire, and then the state and labor organizations in contemporary Turkey in terms of the influence of the rules, norms and institutions transferred by the bureaucratic élites from Western Europe.

The paper concludes that a substantive democratic setting for the interplay of the state and labor organizations could not be built up without a self‐supportive political culture in view of the fact that the process of top‐down modernization/Europeanization in the Ottoman‐Turkish context has given rise to a never‐ending center‐periphery dichotomy between both inter‐class and intra‐class relationships.

The paper sheds light on the labor relations part of the Ottoman‐Turkish political culture and reveals its impact on the never‐ending top‐down modernization initiative.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate gender differences in work experiences, satisfactions and psychological health among physicians in Turkey.

Data were collected from 237 male and 194 female physicians using an anonymously completed questionnaire. Measures included personal demographic and work situation characteristics, stable individual difference factors (e.g. workaholism components, Type A behavior, optimism), job behaviors (e.g. perfectionism, hours worked), work and extra‐work satisfactions, indicators of work engagement, and psychological wellbeing.

There were few differences in personal demographic and work situation characteristics. Female physicians had less professional tenure and worked fewer hours and extra‐hours per week. Female and male physicians were similar on stable individual difference factors, job behaviors, work outcomes, extra‐work satisfactions and psychological wellbeing, with a few exceptions. Female physicians reported more work‐family conflict and more psychosomatic symptoms and tended to be absent more.

Data were collected using self‐report questionnaires raising the possibility of response set tendencies. It is also not clear to what extent these findings generalize to male and female physicians in other countries.

Despite previous studies showing considerable gender differences in the work experiences and wellbeing of female and male physicians in other countries, female and male physicians in Turkey reported generally similar job behaviors, satisfactions, quality of life and emotional wellbeing. This suggests that an emphasis on gender similarities rather than gender differences might be warranted.