Can Carbon Emission Trading Policy Reduce PM2.5? Evidence from Hubei, China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Article titled Can Carbon emission trading policy reduce PM2.5? Evidence from Hubei, China is an article on an environmental topic from the field of research on the effectiveness of emission allowances.

     Given the current global climate issues, this is a hot topic, especially in an industrialized region like China.

     However, I have a number of reservations about the work itself.

The authors use time series to investigate the effectiveness of emission regulation through the emission allowance system in a specific Chinese region through regression analysis and other statistical analyses.

     This approach is quite frequent and there are many current publications on this topic, so the originality of the research and its contribution are very low.

- The first major caveat is the out-of-dateness of the time series that are examined in the years 2000 - 2016. You need to be aware of the current year 2022! The authors are working with 6-year-old data! For such research, data must be found at least until 2020, even if they are not yet in the official statistics!

- In the Introduction section, I lack clearly specified research goals and tasks, which should then be precisely quantified in the conclusion section.

- in this or possibly special part, I also lack a clear explanation of the specifics of individual cities and the reason for their inclusion in the research.

- Not a single table, figure, or graph has sources listed. This is absolutely necessary in an impact periodical, even if it is one's own work. Even so, it is necessary to quote at least Source: Own creation... The work contains images whose origin is unclear. Tables and graphs can be assumed to be your own creation, but even here the source must be mentioned!

- The formulas used, which are numerous, do not have clearly described symbols and variables. It is necessary to immediately follow each formula with a where: formula and describe all symbols.

- although the results achieved are generally described in the conclusion, I lack here an evaluation of specific research goals and exact results in numbers.

- in the Discussion section there is absolutely no concrete comparison with similar research works in the field! At the same time, the work has good literary sources...

- Apart from the out-of-date data, I see the final part and the recommendation as the biggest problem. If the authors absolutely need to include this part in their work, they should base it on recommendations that directly result from their research results! Unfortunately, the mentioned recommendations do not result from the results of the work and are flat, general and at the level of the basic rules of Micro and Macroeconomics.... Yes, governments should support investments in environmentally friendly technologies and allocate resources and control the market with emission allowances. But that is not a consequence of the research of this work!

- Thanks to the well-executed statistical analysis, I do not completely reject this article, but I point out that the problem with this work is the out-of-dateness of the data and the presentation of the results, as well as the construction of the article itself.

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

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Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The caveat that the data on which the research analysis is based remains out of date. I believe that the novelty of the research is small.

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

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Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf