The Impact of Green Finance on High-Quality Economic Development in China: Vertical Fiscal Imbalance as the Moderating Effect

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Please see attached review document

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Some typos and grammatical errors

Very (very) long sentences make it impossible to understand what is going on in places. A thorough and professional proofread is required, focus on the long sentences and shorten them.

Author Response

Dear reviewer, we are grateful for the suggestion comments, which greatly helped us to improve the manuscript. To provide more detail about the revisions we have made, we have uploaded documents named Manuscript_A_Revision, which is with revision detail. And in the Manuscript_A_Revision document, the blue marks are our own revisions, and the red marks are revisions made with the help of the English Editing Agency, from who we sought help to reduce errors, as English is not our native language. Next, we will respond point by point to the revisions we have made.

Point 1: the article MUST be thoroughly and professionally proofread because some grammar and spelling typos remain and a considerably issue is extraordinarily long (often paragraph long) sentences.

 

Response 1: We are sorry for the mistake. To reduce the number of grammatical errors, we sought help from a professional English editing agency after reworking it ourselves. I hope that these are effective in improving the quality of the manuscript.

 

 Point 2: Define green development in a sentence.

 Response 2: Thank you for your valuable advice. We defined green development in lines 29 to 30 of document Manuscript_A_Revision.

 

Point 3: Section 2.1- This is a hugely confusing paragraph – rather bullet point the three aspects of high-quality economic development. Currently, these are lost deep in the dense paragraph

Response 3: Thank you for your instructive suggestions. We deleted this confusing paragraph.

 

Point 4: Section 2.2: Green finance has not inspired green credit green finance can significantly increase the green productivity- Define these terms in a sentence

Response 4: We deleted this paragraph to improve the flow of the article.

 

Point 5: This is a long and clumsy sentence – consider: Using Chinese provincial level panel data, we first examine the impact mechanism of green finance and empirically test its effect on high-quality economic development from a macro perspective.

 

Response 5: Thank you for your instructive suggestion. As shown in lines 99 to 101 of document Manuscript_A_Revision, we have used your thoughtful comments. Thank you very much to point out the sentence structure and grammatical issues in our manuscript.

Point 6: Section 3.1- The essence of green finance is a financial instrument that incorporates the concept of green development.-- This should be placed much earlier, in the introduction

 

Response 6: Thank you for your careful reading of our manuscript. We have placed the sentence you mentioned in lines 39 to 40 of document Manuscript_A_Revision.

 

Point 7: Section 4.1, equation (1), (2), (3). The principal variables are not defined, impossible to fathom what is going on

 

Response 7: Thank you for your careful reading of our manuscript. We are very sorry for our fault statement in Section 4. To improve the readability of Section 4, we switched the order of Baseline regression model and Variable Description and data sources.

 

Point 8: [Sun, Li, and Qayyum 2021, Zhao et al. 2022][44,45]- Sometimes only numbers are used to refer to an article, sometimes the details AND the number – what referencing style is this?Inconsistent

Response 8: Thank you very much. We deleted the names of the scholars leaving only the numbers.

 

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

Congratulations on the paper. It contributes to the better use of green financing and quality investments. 
I am not sure that from Tables 5 to 9, all data provides the same value for the reader. Instead of explaining the statistical method here, you should only conclude your findings. However, the transparency of your analysis is excellent.
Such recommendations are rare in scientific papers. Even if they are valid by the research, the responsible parties and stakeholders are not involved in the process. Therefore, these recommendations can be biased, non-conclusive, incoherent or non-comprehensive.
However, altogether those recommendations are critical and valuable. I would change the language in a way it presents opportunities rather than recommend changes.

Congratulations again; I enjoyed reading this excellent contribution.

Author Response

Dear reviewer, thank you for your careful reading of our manuscript. We have also uploaded documents named Manuscript_A, which is without revision detail, and Manuscript_A_Revision, which is without revision detail. And in the Manuscript_A_Revision document, the blue marks are our own revisions, and the red marks are revisions made with the help of the English Editing Agency, from who we sought help to reduce errors, as English is not our native language. Next, we will respond point by point to the revisions we have made.

Point 1: Therefore, these recommendations can be biased, non-conclusive, incoherent or non-comprehensive.

 

Response1: we deeply appreciate the reviewer's comment. In the context of China's still imperfect market mechanism, the actions of the central government as well as local governments can play a decisive role in promoting the process of regional economic development, so we can only call on governments at all levels to actively take measures that are conducive to promoting the development of green finance. We appreciate your understanding.

Reviewer 3 Report

I really appreciate the author’s contribution to studying the impact of green finance on high-quality economic development and the moderating effect of vertical fiscal imbalances. I appreciate the topic and I consider that such researches, focused on green finance, deserve more interest from the academia, and especially from policy makers.

My comments on the paper are:

1. The paper is generally well written with adequate clarity which demonstrates the author’s knowledge in the field.

2. The paper structure respects the structure requested, in general, in research papers.

3. The abstract presents the aim of the paper (it can be read between the lines), the analysis method and the main results (conclusion) described in the manuscript.

Nonetheless, as the abstract clearly highlights that the study was performed on the Chinese example, the title does not seem to suggest that. I strongly recommend to update the title to prepare any reader that they are dealing on a Chinese case study. Including the keywords.

4. In the Introduction section, I recommend clearly defining the aim of the paper, the scope (within a very well written context of the paper), very briefly the methodology (that will be used to reach the aim), and novelty of the paper.

The aim of the paper should not be deduced, should be strongly emphasized. Afterwards, the author could suggest how broad is this research (scope) and briefly point out same methodological traits (starting from what he suggests in the Abstract, without getting to much into details).

An important limitation of the paper, in its current form, is that is very difficult know the original aspects of the paper. This has to be clear from the beginning, in introduction. In a trivial form, the message is there somehow, but it not so straightforward.

5. The literature review could use some refinement. The authors present a number of references but these seem to be only of Chinese origin. Is the study limited only to Chinese literature and Chinese data? Then, what is the point of publishing it internationally, while this could be done only at national level?

I appreciate that the author dedicated a special section to Theoretical Basis and Research Hypothesis. And yet, the same problem regarding the restrictive literature.

6. The methodology is well presented and has a dedicated section.

7. I recommend that the author highlights more clearly the results of the analysis in relation to the existing theory. Then, the author could mention in what way these results could be used effectively (pushing thus the theory forward and the level of understanding). And also, be advised to point out that these refer only to the Chinese case study. Now, how can these results be extrapolated to other emerging markets? The author has to point out why should a non-Chinese reader refer and cite this paper? In what manner does these result may refer also to other countries.

9. References are appropriate with the paper aim. I recommend to look into more recent studies in the field. And do not limit the literature only to Chinese origin.

10. I recommend that the authors present the limitations of the paper (in the conclusion section).

Please align properly the components of the paper with the Chinese case study: Title, Literature, Data, Results.

Otherwise, it was an interesting paper.

Some English refinements are needed.

Author Response

Dear reviewer, thank you very much to point out the deficiencies in our manuscript. To provide more details about the revisions we have made, we have uploaded the document named Manuscript_A_Revision, which is with revision detail. And in the Manuscript_A_Revision document, the blue marks are our own revisions, and the red marks are revisions made with the help of the English Editing Agency, from who we sought help to reduce errors, as English is not our native language. Next, we will respond point by point to the revisions we have made.

Point 1: I strongly recommend to update the title to prepare any reader that they are dealing on a Chinese case study. Including the keywords.

 

Response 1: We deeply appreciate your constructive comments that greatly help improve the technical quality and the presentation of this manuscript. Please also accept our apologies for not being able to guide our readers properly. In response to reviewer’s concern, we have changed the title “The Impact of Green Finance on High-quality Economic Development—Vertical fiscal imbalance as Moderating Effect” into the title “The Impact of Green Finance on High-quality Economic Development in China—Vertical fiscal imbalance as Moderating Effect”, and added “China” to the keyword.

 

Point 2:In the Introduction section, I recommend clearly defining the aim of the paper, the scope (within a very well written context of the paper), very briefly the methodology (that will be used to reach the aim), and novelty of the paper.

 

Response 2: Special thanks to you for your good comments and we are very sorry for our unclear report in the Introduction section. As shown in lines 32 to 34 of document Manuscript_A_Revision, we have emphasized the study objectives.

 

Point 3: The literature review could use some refinement. The authors present a number of references but these seem to be only of Chinese origin. Is the study limited only to Chinese literature and Chinese data? Then, what is the point of publishing it internationally, while this could be done only at national level?

 

Response 3: Thank you for your valuable and thoughtful comments and it is our negligence and we are sorry about this. To improve the flow of the article, we have integrated the original "literature review" section into Introduction section and expanded the international literature. Thank you very much agaun for your attention and time.

 

Point 4:I recommend that the author highlights more clearly the results of the analysis in relation to the existing theory.

Response 4: Thank you for your valuable advice, and we have added discussion in lines 438 to 449 of document Manuscript_A_Revision.

 

Point 5:Then, the author could mention in what way these results could be used effectively (pushing thus the theory forward and the level of understanding).

 

Response 5: Thank you for your thoughtful comments. As you suggested, we have already described the contribution of our article from both theoretical and practical perspectives in lines 451 to 464 of document Manuscript_A_Revision.

 

Point 6:And also, be advised to point out that these refer only to the Chinese case study. Now, how can these results be extrapolated to other emerging markets? The author has to point out why should a non-Chinese reader refer and cite this paper? In what manner does these result may refer also to other countries.

 

Response 6: Thank you for your careful reading of our manuscript. In fact, the vertical fiscal imbalance is not unique to China, and it is only a phenomenon and its essence is still the fiscal pressure on local governments, and its impact on economic development is mainly through the actions of local governments. Therefore, it is also instructive for non-Chinese readers. Special thanks to you for your good comments.

 

Point 7: I recommend that the authors present the limitations of the paper (in the conclusion section).

 

Response 7: Considering the Reviewer’s suggestion, we have presented the “Research limitations and perspectives” in lines 500 to 513 of document Manuscript_A_Revision.

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for considering my comments.

Congratulations.

It is fine.