Capital Structure Determinants of Forest Enterprises: Empirical Study Based on Panel Data Analysis from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Bulgaria

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript is focused on investigation, evaluation, and comparison between the capital structure determinants of forest enterprises in three EU countries, namely the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Bulgaria in the context of the relation between leverage and factors of its appearance. In general, the manuscript is well-written, structured and informative, but still needs some minor improvements before acceptance for publication in the Forests Journal. Please, see below my comments on your work:

The title (lines 2-4), abstract (lines 18 to 32) and the keywords (lines 33) correspond to the specified aims and objectives of the manuscript. The abstract is concise, specific, and outlines the aim and main results of the study.

In the keywords, I recommend to add also “forestry”.

Line 18: “Forestry” should not be capitalised, please use small caps.

Line 24: “period of 2015 – 2019” – “of” is not necessary, please revise.

Line 31: “deci-sion-making” – obviously a typo mistake, please revise.

Overall, the Introduction is very well prepared and provides relevant information on the research topic.

Line 153, Table 2: I recommend to revise the title, i.e. “Descriptive statistics of the forest enterprises”.

Materials and Methods: Overall, the Materials and Methods section is very well presented and provides relevant information about the studied 18 enterprises, i.e. 6 by country. In this part, please add also what are the limitations (constraints) of the research. In fact, you have given them (lines 433-437), but in at the end of the Results and Discussion section, I believe they belong to the Materials and Methods, please revise

Line 276: wrong table numbering, it should be Table 3, please revise. The same comment applies also to line 278.

Line 281: the cited reference (Kennedy, 2003) is neither properly cited, please use [], nor included in the references of your manuscript, please revise.

Lines 288, 290, and 292: wrong table numbering, it should be Table 4, please revise.

Lines 298, 299, and 301: Table 5, please revise.

Line 303: “Bulgaria and Slovakia” – incorrect font used, please revise.

Line 320, 322: Table 6, please revise.

Line 334, 336, and 339: Table 7, please revise.

Line 348, 350, and 353: Table 8, please revise.

Line 374, 375, and 377: Table 9, please revise.

Line 395, 396: Table 10, please revise.

Line 407, 408: Table 11, please revise.

Lines 437-439: the potential for future studies should belong to the Conclusions, and not in Results and Discussion, please revise.

Overall, the Results and Discussion section is very well prepared, and discussed with relevant publications in the field.

The Conclusion part reflects the main findings of the research work. Please add a few lines about the practical application of your results for the financial management of the investigated forest enterprises.  

The references cited are appropriate and correspond to the research topic. Most of the references are not formatted in accordance with the Journal requirements, please revise.

In Reference no. 3 the name of the firs author is not correct, the correct one should be Hajjar, R. Please revise.

Best regards!

Author Response

We would like to express our gratitude for your effort in processing and reviewing our manuscript. The suggestions and comments you raised are of real help for us in elaborating a more valuable, useful, clear to understand and readable paper.

• We added forestry to the key words.
• We made all the corrections from line 18 to 34.
• We revised the titles of the tables and changed numbers with the correct ones.
• The limitations to the research was put in “Materials and Methods” section.
• We improved the conclusions.
• References were changed to meet MDPI requirements.

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper submitted for review deals with a topic rarely described in the scientific literature. A comparison of the financial results of the operation of forest enterprises in selected countries is not found in the literature. Such a detailed description of the economic problems of forest enterprises is a valuable contribution to research in the field of forestry.
The use of statistical methods in the analysis of the results deserves special recognition. In my opinion, the description of the results in Tables 1 and 2 needs improvement. The description of the results included in the article is more of a description of the methodology.
Combining results and discussion in one chapter is acceptable. With this approach, it would be worthwhile to comment in more detail on the results contained in each table. I realise that a typical discussion (based on the literature) will be difficult for this thesis. Therefore, I propose to write a few words of commentary on the results obtained and their significance from the point of view of the authors of the article.
The paper is concluded with an accurate summary of the results. It accurately establishes the differences in the results according to the country.

Author Response

We would like to express our gratitude for your effort in processing and reviewing our manuscript. The suggestions and comments you raised are of real help for us in elaborating a more valuable, useful, clear to understand and readable paper. 

• Descriptions of the results in Table 1 and 2 were improved.
• We included some words at the end of the “Results and Discussion” section.