Indigenous peoples are groups with different cultural and social characteristics that share inherited ties to their homeland and natural resources. They have their own understanding and cultural experience that amounts to traditional ecological knowledge. The aim of this study is to identify the impacts of traditional ecological knowledge on indigenous people. Two main databases, namely Web of Science and Scopus, were used to conduct a systematic literature review. From the findings and analysis, two themes and eleven sub-themes were identified. The first theme is economic activities, including six sub-themes: sources of income, employment opportunities, offering products to vendors or buyers, providing market value, providing low treatment cost, and providing opportunities to develop micro-enterprises. The second theme is health, with five sub-themes: supporting food security, harvesting country food, food or plant benefits, perceived health or medicinal purposes, and livelihoods of the indigenous people. In conclusion, traditional knowledge can play an important role in contributing to the livelihoods of indigenous people. In general, traditional knowledge can help indigenous people to improve their quality of life, especially those who rely on natural resources to survive, by offering secure and supplemented food, for instance, as well as a source of earnings, crucial for food security during hard times. Additionally, traditional knowledge of wild edible and medicinal plants can play a significant role in a community’s capacity to remain resilient and be preserved for future generations.

Purpose: – The purpose of this paper is to determine the impact of wealth tax (zakat) and corporate tax (CT) on the firm's capital structure. The pioneering works of capital structure were introduced by Modgliani and Miller (1958). Subsequently, these studies were extended by other authors such as Elton and Gruber (1970), Miller (1977), DeAngelo and Masulis (1980), Mackie-Mason (1990), Harris and Raviv (1991), Rajan and Zingales (1995) and Booth et al. (2001). The diversity of the study covers from the advantage of CT to the cost of debt financing. The empirical evidence has also been applied to different countries with a good data access and different legal and accounting environments. However, this study is still relevant especially on the advantages of wealth tax, and the utilization of Islamic debt and equity financing to the firm's capital structure. Design/methodology/approach: – The study uses the sample of Malaysian firms that are listed in the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange. The cross-sectional and time-series data covering 422 companies from 1996 to 2000 are compiled from the database published by the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange. All the sample firms are listed as a syariah company that normally pays the wealth tax. These data, then, are used to examine the effects of several explanatory variables, i.e. wealth tax and CT, and several controlled variables on firm capital structure decisions. Findings: – The results showed that, first, the significance of wealth tax is consistent with the argument that firms that pay high wealth tax should be financed with relatively more debt. Second, as the CT rate is raised, firms are subjected to lower CT rates which would lead them to utilize more debt in their capital structures. Third, a significant relationship exists between age, size, return on assets, volatility, industry classification, tangible assets and bankruptcy with the capital structure. Originality/value: – This paper viewed the tax benefits and the zakat payments in isolation. However, the tax deductions and the zakat payments are both expected to influence the capital structure decisions. The paper will study this decision and reveal the determinants that influence the capital structure decisions in general and the specific choice of payments, i.e. tax and zakat payments.

The introduction of good and services tax (GST) that has replaced the sales and services tax (SST) had contributed to the rising cost of living in Malaysia. The focus of this research was to present a data article on the response and perception of Malaysian households about the increasing cost of living. A descriptive research design was adopted in this study. Data were obtained from randomly selected 751 respondents of households across Malaysia. The data were collected through a structured questionnaire. Data analysis was carried out using tables and percentages. The findings show the negative perceptions of Malaysian households on the increase in the cost of living. There are various causes of the rising cost of living and can be inferred based on the perspective of income changes, price changes and patterns household consumption expenditure.