The Environmental Patents, Changing Investment, Trade Landscape, and Factors Contributing to Sustainable GVCs Participation: Evidence from Emerging Market Countries

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper attempt to quantify the effect of a number of factors including environmental patents on sustainable participation in GVC at the country and at the bilateral level. The main focus is on emerging market countries and the methodology used is a panel data analysis using the generalised methods of moments for dynamic panels.
The main aim is well defined and it is an important question, the paper properly focused on the topic and the econometric methodologies considered are sufficiently applied. The introduction contains part of the data and variable description and makes a sufficient justification for the selection of countries. The use of instrumental variables is sufficiently explained. To apply dynamic GMM the model is estimated by taking first differences in all the variables (dependent and independent) and it is clear what variables are considered as endogenous in the estimations. Likewise, the selection of instruments is also discussed or justified. Given all these arguments in the empirical application, the empirical results are interpretable, and there is no given deficiencies in the use of the econometric methodology. A  sound enough empirical analysis has been done to obtain convincing results.
based on the discussion, I recommend the following changes to the author to enhance the visibility of the manuscript: 
1. Relate the conclusion with the findings of the regression in some more understandable way. 
2. Explain the use of control variables in the study’s perspective.
3. Some references are missing in the reference section. 
4. Don't use abbreviations in the abstract section while defined them before using them in the manuscript's body. 
5. Appendixes are not properly numbered.
6. clearly indicate the policy implication based on the empirical outcomes only

Author Response

1. Conclusion has already been related with the findings of the study and it is further changed and now it is related with the findings of our study.
2. The use of control variables was for the purpose to avoid the problem of omitted variables biasness and to explain them in our study's perspective is not in the domain of our purpose as we are trying to adjust our paper wordings according to journals requirements.
3. Missing references has added.
4. Abbreviation from abstract has been removed. 
5. The numbering of Appendixes has been revised.
6. Policy implication has been revised and corrected. 

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments

This paper explores the factors contributing for sustainable Participation in Global Value Chains (2000 -2018)for 23 EMC countries including developed and developing countries. To do so, this work applies the SYS-GMM approach to control problem of endogeneity in this study. It is interesting study and need some minor changes to improve the quality of the work to reach it to the publishable level. Followings are  recommendations needed to improve quality of the work before it is finally published.

1. Introduction is lengthy and verbose and Please explain shortcomings of the previous research studies clearly in the introduction and explain your research contribution clearly and precis.

 

2. Please include Literature Gap/Study’s Contribution in Introduction Section and explain it more clearly.

 

3. Why sample of only 23 countries are included (Developed +developing) and why time span (2000-2018) is chosen and it is on annual basis. Please also mention classification source for sample of 23 countries. Will it be more interesting study if it is categorized in to developed and developing countries?

 

4. Results, methodology and discussion is fine.

 

5. Conclusion is needed to make more interesting. Only empirical findings are explained in the conclusion. Please recommend interesting policy implication and recommendations in the conclusion. Conclusion is missing some interesting policy implication.

 

6. references are needed to be updated and only include last 5-7 years where it possible.

Author Response

1. Introduction is not lengthy and verbose. It is according to the requirements of current relevant topics. Further shortcomings and gaps has been revised in introduction section.
2. The contribution of our study is clearly explained in introduction section. 
3. The sample of 23 countries is because of the data of other 3 countries was missing or the countries have not enough contribution to the global or region economy so we ignored them. 
4. Conclusion has been revised as suggested by the reviewer. 

Reviewer 3 Report

1. Compute power correlations (with significance levels) in Table1.
2. Which factor of five (human capital, exchange rate financial development, economic freedom, and environmental patents)  should be more interested based on literature? States the hypothesis. 
3. Many important words and abbreviations are used, and consideration is required for the parts that need further explanation for the reader.
4. Write mathematical operators by using math types, for example, pp 15, *.
5. Need to explain the meaning  of equations (3), (4) and (5) clearly. What do indexes i, and j stand for? 

Author Response

1. Power correlation is not necessary when we have estimated the correlation coefficients for each variable in previous section. So we don't want to repeat the same thing again.
2. We did explained that environmental patents are more interesting and have significant impact on GVCs as compared with other mentioned variables by the reviewer. 
3. Proper mathematical operators have been use and I think you were facing an issue to open it properly or your computer windows were not supporting it. We are revising it as respected reviewer asked for. 
4. The abbreviation used in this paper have been explained very well. we explained them before using. Yet we are revising whole manuscript and we are explaining them if any of the abbreviation is left unexplained. 
5. We have revised equation 3, 4 and 5 as asked by the reviewer.