Environmental Performance Evaluation of the Korean Manufacturing Industry Based on Sequential DEA

Round  1

Reviewer 1 Report

1.       Overall, this manuscript requires a major revision. Linguistically, the text should be checked by a native speaker. Reconsideration of the title is suggested. One suggestion could be “Environmental Performance Evaluation of the Korean Manufacturing Industry.”

2.       The abstract should be improved. Background of the research topic, the originality, and key findings should be understood when the abstract is read isolated from the text. The statement “‘no technical regress’ will be assumed because it is more appropriate for the manufacturing industry in the short run” appears in the abstract strongly. This should be removed from the abstract and explained in the method section.

3.       What does “stepwise approach” means in the abstract?

4.       The authors stated, “Although it is not enough to increase, the decomposition of it showed 0.8% due to 17 the implementation of ETS”. What would be an “enough increase”?

5.       The Acronyms should be checked throughout the manuscript including the abstract.

6.       Several words such as “Meanwhile” are repeating unnecessarily throughout the text. Please reduce the use of words such as “meanwhile,” “however,” and “in addition” as much as possible. Please also eliminate the use the personal writing including the use of “we,” “she,” “us,” “our,” etc.

7.       L36-37, Page 1: “As we can see from these data, Korea should make more proactive efforts to escape from the stigma.”: “to escape from” is an inappropriate phrase.

8.       In the introduction section, several paragraphs are separated necessary. Some can be combined with others.  

9.       L58-61, Page 2: Unclear. Please explain logically.

10.   L56, Page 2: What does “challenges from China” means?

11.   L79, page 3: “Thus, the aim of this paper is to examine the overall environmental performance of Korean manufacturing industry in a more dynamic perspective.”: please explain the “dynamic perspective.” How? What “dynamic” mean? About what aspects?

12.   L87-88, Page 3: “a very few studies used the individual company-level data and its emission volume in this field”: Please cite some of those studies.  Further, a brief review of existing studies are required: how this study fill those gaps? How is explicitly contributing and regarding what, and how?

13.   In the same line: “It will be of help to enhance the reliability of empirical result and its resulting policy suggestions”: how?

14.   L94-95, Page 3: “This approach certainly shall be more appropriate in analyzing manufacturing industry as the first trial in Korea as far as we know.’: How the authors could judge in the introduction section, the approach is “more appropriate”? This is too strange. Further, how it is “more appropriate”?

15.   L96-99, Page 3: All those lines are unnecessary. Please delete them.

16.   L102, Page 3: “As usual, the model will begin with the basic three.”  The use of “As usual” is too strange. What does this mean? “As usual” of what?

17.   L106, Page 3: “where T is often assumed to satisfy the standard axioms of the production theory”: unclear.

18.   L130, Page 4: “Therefore, following Chung et al. [17] and Zhou et al. [18], we selected the observed value as g= (x, y) in this paper.”: Unclear.

19.   L160, Page 5: “its frontier consists”: what does this mean?

20.   L171-172, Page 5: “The EC index in the Equation (6) measures the “catching-up” effect that measures environmental 171 efficiency changes for a DMU (firm) between the period t and t+1.”: Unclear.

21.   L177, Page 5: “TC is always more than unity”: what does this mean?

22.   L81-182, Page 6: “289 firms belonging to 10 industries”: Please describe some of those firms and industries? E.g., what kind of firms?

23.   L197, Page 6: “previous researches did.”: please refer to (cite) some of them.

24.   L251, Page 8: “the representative Korean exporting group of companies such as Samsung and Hynix, showed the outstanding uptrend for its environmental performance as well.”: What kind of “outstanding performance” of Samsung the authors refer to? With regards to what?

25.   The location of the content of the “Sub-section: Innovative firms” inappropriate. The equations and their explanations should be moved to the method section as this is part of the method.

26.   Table 6 is a bit confusing. It can be improved.

27.   For the conclusion: The lines from L325 to 336 are unnecessary. They are just a summary NOT a conclusion. The authors should state the major concluding points of the research but not summarizing. These are redundant content an unexpected to be seen in a conclusion. Please focus here on what the authors found, conclude, and recommend instead on summarizing what they did.

28.   What are the possible implications of the findings at a policy level as this study promised at earlier stages of the text?

29.   The overall results are not well-presented. Further improvements are possible and are required.

30.   Please cite in the “data” section the source of all kind of data used. Are all were retrieved from http://www.gir.go.kr and “(http://dart.fss.or.kr/)”?

Author Response

1.       Overall, this manuscript requires a major revision. Linguistically, the text should be checked by a native speaker. Reconsideration of the title is suggested. One suggestion could be “Environmental Performance Evaluation of the Korean Manufacturing Industry.”

Response : We really tried our best to enhance all the contents with much qualitative rewriting as well as the Professional English Proof Reading service. To prove this enhanced English style and grammar, we attached ‘Certificate of Professional English Editing’ by American Editing Company. We changed title in more clear way, as you suggested. We changed the title of the paper, “Environmental Performance Evaluation of the Korean Manufacturing Industry based on Sequential DEA. Since the other reviewer asked us to put the methodological terms in the title, we put together in new title.

2.       The abstract should be improved. Background of the research topic, the originality, and key findings should be understood when the abstract is read isolated from the text. The statement “‘no technical regress’ will be assumed because it is more appropriate for the manufacturing industry in the short run” appears in the abstract strongly. This should be removed from the abstract and explained in the method section.

Response : Based on your suggestion, we checked the style of the abstract in the journal. We removed redundant or unclear terminology such as “no technical regress”, and changed several paragraphs, with better implications and unique findings in abstract. Our unique findings are well explained in the three levels in abstract; nationwide perspective, manufacturing industry perspective, and sub-sector of the manufacturing industries perspective.

3.       What does “stepwise approach” means in the abstract?

Response : We used this terminology in that this study adopt SGDDF and SML. SML is derived based on SGDDF. However, We removed this “stepwise approach” from abstract. We explained “stepwise approach” at the end of literature review as follows,

“Since, the aim of this study is to evaluate the overall environmental performance of the Korean manufacturing industry from a more dynamic perspective, we will analyze the overall as well as sub-sectoral manufacturing industries’ performance in stepwise approach. In the first stage, the environmental efficiency shall be derived based on the SGDDF on the manufacturing industry.  In the second stage, we examine the governing factors of this dynamic change in the Korean manufacturing industry by using the Sequential Malmquist-Luenberger (SML) index. In this second stage, we not only find out the feasible factors influencing environmental productivity, but also the innovator companies for each sub-sector industries. In order to find out the determinant factor in the second stage, we shall decompose the SML into efficiency change (‘EC’) and technology change (‘TC’). However, we assume that even in the manufacturing industry, there exist different individual characters on the sub-sectoral industries, and thus we may find out the over as well as the sub-sectoral determinant factors between EC and TC. If a sub-sectoral industry outperforms in EC, catch-up effect is much more important to enhance its environmental performance. Based on this argument, we shall deduce the leader companies as the benchmark for the less productive companies. For the same reason, it a sub-sector outperforms in TC, it should find out the leading innovative company to enhance its productivity. Therefore, at the end of second stage, we report on innovator companies for each sector that are worthy of benchmarking using the concept of technical change.

4.       The authors stated, “Although it is not enough to increase, the decomposition of it showed 0.8% due to the implementation of ETS”. What would be an “enough increase”?

Response : Thanks for correcting our mistake, this paragraph is surely wrong and We changed it as follows. (ETS has implemented since the year 2015)

à The empirical results showed an average increase of 0.3% in environmental productivity measured by the SML over the whole period. Although this is a small increase, the average after 2015 showed a 0.8% increase, implying that the Emission Trading Scheme policy enhanced environmental productivity.

5.       The Acronyms should be checked throughout the manuscript including the abstract.

Response : We checked carefully whether there is any acronyms without explanation.

6.       Several words such as “Meanwhile” are repeating unnecessarily throughout the text. Please reduce the use of words such as “meanwhile,” “however,” and “in addition” as much as possible. Please also eliminate the use the personal writing including the use of “we,” “she,” “us,” “our,” etc.

Response : We tried to reduce them (Meanwhile, However, in addition) as much as possible and changed them (“we,” “she,” “us,” “our,”) using different words. We really hope our changes are acceptable.

7.       L36-37, Page 1: “As we can see from these data, Korea should make more proactive efforts to escape from the stigma.”: “to escape from” is an inappropriate phrase.

Response : This paragraph is revised as follows.

àKorea should needs to make more proactive efforts to overcome from the stigma of being an ‘“environmentally underdeveloped country’.”

8.       In the introduction section, several paragraphs are separated necessary. Some can be combined with others.  

Response : We combined those paragraphs in introduction section

9.       L58-61, Page 2: Unclear. Please explain logically.

Response : We changed this paragraph more readably. We clarified three important missions for our research as shown in the text as follows,

à As this ETS claims a “top-down approach” by the Korean government, it raises the following intrinsic questions for its sustainable performance: Will the ETS be helpful in maintaining national competitiveness? Are emission allocations for each sector reasonable? Which sectors are more beneficial or detrimental to the environment under the current ETS scenario?

10.   L56, Page 2: What does “challenges from China” means?

Response : We rewrote as follows

           à Moreover, in order to face the current serious challenges from China in the form of extremely competitive costs, the manufacturing industry needs to acquire a more advanced environmentally competitive structure.

11.   L79, page 3: “Thus, the aim of this paper is to examine the overall environmental performance of Korean manufacturing industry in a more dynamic perspective.”: please explain the “dynamic perspective.” How? What “dynamic” mean? About what aspects?

Response : Dynamic perspective stands for analysis with time-series data. It is different from cross sectional analysis in that it is possible to focus changing over times. Especially, our research focuses on the determinant factors of the environmental productivity over time. In order to find out determinant factors for the productivity change over time, we use the “Sequential Malmquist-Luenberger (SML) index” and the decomposition of SML will result in the determent factors of productivity change over time. It will be measured by economic efficiency (EC) and technology efficiency (TC). The detailed explanations are shown at the end of literature review as follows,

In order to find out the determinant factor in the second stage, we shall decompose the SML into efficiency change (‘EC’) and technology change (‘TC’). However, we assume that even in the manufacturing industry, there exist different individual characters on the sub-sectoral industries, and thus we may find out the over as well as the sub-sectoral determinant factors between EC and TC. If a sub-sectoral industry outperforms in EC, catch-up effect is much more important to enhance its environmental performance. Based on this argument, we shall deduce the leader companies as the benchmark for the less productive companies. For the same reason, it a sub-sector outperforms in TC, it should find out the leading innovative company to enhance its productivity. Therefore, at the end of second stage, we report on innovator companies for each sector that are worthy of benchmarking using the concept of technical change.

For this dynamic analysis, we used 7 years of panel data.

12.   L87-88, Page 3: “a very few studies used the individual company-level data and its emission volume in this field”: Please cite some of those studies.  Further, a brief review of existing studies are required: how this study fill those gaps? How is explicitly contributing and regarding what, and how?

Response : We added citation and explanation as follows

à very few studies have used individual company-level data and their emission volumes in this field [Choi and Lee, 2016; Choi et al., 2017; Lee and Choi, 2018]. All these studies also adopt the same variables when it comes to analyzing Korean industries’ environmental performance. Not only is it easy to obtain recent company-level data, but GHG emission data is also preferable to pure CO2 data. This will help enhance the reliability of the empirical results and the resulting policy suggestions.

13.   In the same line: “It will be of help to enhance the reliability of empirical result and its resulting policy suggestions”: how?

Response : We explained the background of the reliability of the research as follows,

It is very advantageous to know variables in detail. Especially, this study used individual companies’ energy consumption and GHG emission presented by government. Therefore, it is expected to enhance empirical reliability.

14.   L94-95, Page 3: “This approach certainly shall be more appropriate in analyzing manufacturing industry as the first trial in Korea as far as we know.’: How the authors could judge in the introduction section, the approach is “more appropriate”? This is too strange. Further, how it is “more appropriate”?

Response : We are sorry for the terrible English sentence. We made it more clear sentence with the explanations in detail. Most of all, we excluded “more appropriate” and changed paragraph as follows (L81 to 84)

Third, from the methodological perspective, we adopt the concept of sequential generalized DDF (SGDDF), which is suitable for reflecting environmentally sensitive production in more field-oriented terms. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first trial adopting this methodology to explore the Korean manufacturing industry.

For the better understanding on our approach “Sequential DEA”, we added the following explanations for the “appropriate approach” (L98 to 102)

According to Shestalova, in the standard DEA approach, the production frontier could move inward, implying a ”technical regression.” This assumption is not appropriate for the manufacturing industry because a decline in productivity in this industry could be a temporary phenomenon; and technological deterioration could induce a confusing result.

15.   L96-99, Page 3: All those lines are unnecessary. Please delete them.

Response :Thanks for comments. We removed all.

16.   L102, Page 3: “As usual, the model will begin with the basic three.”  The use of “As usual” is too strange. What does this mean? “As usual” of what?

Response : We changed “As usual---“ as follows.

à Based on the traditional approach to the production function, the model begins with the basic three inputs

17.   L106, Page 3: “where T is often assumed to satisfy the standard axioms of the production theory”: unclear.

Response : We changed with more readable way,

à “where T is assumed to satisfy all the standard axioms of the production theory [15]. That is, inactivity is always possible,.---“.

18.   L130, Page 4: “Therefore, following Chung et al. [17] and Zhou et al. [18], we selected the observed value as g= (x, y) in this paper.”: Unclear.

Response : We changed paragraph as follows.

à Therefore, following Chung et al. [17] and Zhou et al. [18], this study selected the observed value as the directional vector.

19.   L160, Page 5: “its frontier consists”: what does this mean?

Response : We revised this sentence as follows.

à However, the sequence reference is different. The frontier consists of the decision-making units (DMUs) of the current period and all previous periods and DMUs constructing the frontier of period t+1 contain the DMUs of period t.

20.   L171-172, Page 5: “The EC index in the Equation (6) measures the “catching-up” effect that measures environmental efficiency changes for a DMU (firm) between the period t and t+1.”: Unclear.

Response : EC index captures efficiency change between consecutive 2 years. If EC index is more than 1, it means specific DMUs efficiency increase from last year. If EC is lower than 1, vice versa. EC index 1 means no efficiency change.

21.   L177, Page 5: “TC is always more than unity”: what does this mean?

Response: Unity means efficiency value 1, and it implies that the object industry (decision making unit, DMU) is on the best performance in efficiency compared with other DMUs.

22.   L81-182, Page 6: “289 firms belonging to 10 industries”: Please describe some of those firms and industries? E.g., what kind of firms?

Response: We moved footnote which shows list of industries to paragraph, and added graph with firms share for each industry.

23.   L197, Page 6: “previous researches did.”: please refer to (cite) some of them.

Response: We added citations.

24.   L251, Page 8: “the representative Korean exporting group of companies such as Samsung and Hynix, showed the outstanding uptrend for its environmental performance as well.”: What kind of “outstanding performance” of Samsung the authors refer to? With regards to what?

Response: In this sentence, outstanding performance means value of SML. Therefore, paragraph “the representative Korean exporting group of companies such as Samsung and Hynix” is removed.

25.   The location of the content of the “Sub-section: Innovative firms” inappropriate. The equations and their explanations should be moved to the method section as this is part of the method.

Response: We deleted it as suggested.

26.   Table 6 is a bit confusing. It can be improved.

Response: We revised it with adding more lines in table.

27.   For the conclusion: The lines from L325 to 336 are unnecessary. They are just a summary NOT a conclusion. The authors should state the major concluding points of the research but not summarizing. These are redundant content an unexpected to be seen in a conclusion. Please focus here on what the authors found, conclude, and recommend instead on summarizing what they did.

Response: We removed L325 to 336 and totally rewrote the paragraphs. We changed conclusion as follows,

As a developing country becoming an advanced economy, Korea has emphasized rapid economic development. However, there have been serious air pollution disasters nationwide and thus it is urgent for the Korean government to find workable environmentally friendly economic policies. This research analyzed the feasibility of the Korean government’s environmental policies by focusing on the ETS. The main findings from the empirical tests can be summarized as follows.--- Since the Korean government hosted the Green Climate Fund in Incheon, it has made great efforts to enhance its environmentally friendly green growth. Nonetheless, the research shows that unilateral measures such as the ETS may have problems and thus it needs more precisely differentiated environmental regulation for each industry. Moreover, the research results support the idea that green technology innovation is a key factor for promoting growth in the green economy. The benchmarking firms definitely play a leading role in promoting innovation activities, and, thus, more performance-oriented incentives for these leading firms could result in a trickle-down effect in green technology.

28.   What are the possible implications of the findings at a policy level as this study promised at earlier stages of the text?

Response: We added some unique implications and suggestions as shown above. It gives new direction for policy; instead of uniform, general regulation, customized, differentiated policies on the sub-sector industries should be emphasized.

29.   The overall results are not well-presented. Further improvements are possible and are required.

Response: As mentioned in response 28, we added the following implications,

As a developing country becoming an advanced economy, Korea has emphasized rapid economic development. However, there have been serious air pollution disasters nationwide and thus it is urgent for the Korean government to find workable environmentally friendly economic policies. This research analyzed the feasibility of the Korean government’s environmental policies by focusing on the ETS. The main findings from the empirical tests can be summarized as follows. --- Since the Korean government hosted the Green Climate Fund in Incheon, it has made great efforts to enhance its environmentally friendly green growth. Nonetheless, the research shows that unilateral measures such as the ETS may have problems and thus it needs more precisely differentiated environmental regulation for each industry. Moreover, the research results support the idea that green technology innovation is a key factor for promoting growth in the green economy. The benchmarking firms definitely play a leading role in promoting innovation activities, and, thus, more performance-oriented incentives for these leading firms could result in a trickle-down effect in green technology.

30.   Please cite in the “data” section the source of all kind of data used. Are all were retrieved from http://www.gir.go.kr and “(http://dart.fss.or.kr/)”?

Response: Yes, five variables are from these two websites. K,L,E from DART. Energy, GHG from gir.go.kr.

Reviewer 2 Report

The introduction is very weak, the authors must improve introdction very critically based on:

Background of study,

Research gaps and problem statement,

Significant/ contribution of study.

The literature review also very weak, the must provide the comprehensive LR in the field based on:

Highlight the novelty of study,

Provide LR for all used variables in this study

Application of proposed method in environmenta performance

Discuss about manufacturing industry and the current problem of this industry in Korea

In the current form there is no LR.

Reseach method must be improved based on:

Provide a diagram for showing step by step of method

Provide information about manufacturing industry

Why manufacturing industry?

Discuss and compare about advantages of used method with other current methods, why this methods? Why other method not? 

The title should be modified based on method, its mean need to add the in-used method in the title. 

Need to add description on CO2, GHG, etc. For example Greenhouse Gas (GHG)

Need to validate the results with other methods.

Author Response

The introduction is very weak, the authors must improve introduction very critically based on:

Background of study,

Research gaps and problem statement,

Significant/ contribution of study.

Response: Thanks for your suggestive and helpful comments for enhancing our paper. As you suggested, we rewrote overall introduction again based on recommended three aspects.

The literature review also very weak, the must provide the comprehensive LR in the field based on:

Highlight the novelty of study,

Provide LR for all used variables in this study

Application of proposed method in environmental performance

Discuss about manufacturing industry and the current problem of this industry in Korea

In the current form there is no LR.

Response: We divided introduction into introduction and literature reviews as you recommended. We also added recent references using Sequential DEA. About Manufacturing industry, we added more discussion it in introduction such as

The manufacturing industry contributes 32.5% of the GDP and 27.5% of GHG emissions in Korea Furthermore, Korean manufacturing industry is ranked 5th in the world in 2017 with value added 422,064.51 US dollar [The world bank]. Thus, Korean manufacturing industry is highly related with national competence, and is therefore our focus in this study. Moreover, in order to face the current serious challenges from China in the form of extremely competitive costs, the manufacturing industry needs to acquire a more advanced environmentally competitive structure. Nevertheless, there is little literature to date exploring this industry from an environmental perspective. 

Research method must be improved based on:

Provide a diagram for showing step by step of method

Provide information about manufacturing industry

Why manufacturing industry?

Response: We added following paragraph to support selecting this industry.

We explained the reason why manufacturing industry as follows : The manufacturing industry contributes 32.5% of the GDP and 27.5% of GHG emissions in Korea Furthermore, Korean manufacturing industry is ranked 5th in the world in 2017 with value added 422,064.51 US dollar [The world bank]. Thus, Korean manufacturing industry is highly related with national competence, and is therefore our focus in this study. Moreover, in order to face the current serious challenges from China in the form of extremely competitive costs, the manufacturing industry needs to acquire a more advanced environmentally competitive structure. Nevertheless, there is little literature to date exploring this industry from an environmental perspective. 

Instead of simple diagram, we explained details about the step-wise approach as follows,

“Since, the aim of this study is to evaluate the overall environmental performance of the Korean manufacturing industry from a more dynamic perspective, we will analyze the overall as well as sub-sectoral manufacturing industries’ performance in stepwise approach. In the first stage, the environmental efficiency shall be derived based on the SGDDF on the manufacturing industry.  In the second stage, we examine the governing factors of this dynamic change in the Korean manufacturing industry by using the Sequential Malmquist-Luenberger (SML) index. In this second stage, we not only find out the feasible factors influencing environmental productivity, but also the innovator companies for each sub-sector industries. In order to find out the determinant factor in the second stage, we shall decompose the SML into efficiency change (‘EC’) and technology change (‘TC’). However, we assume that even in the manufacturing industry, there exist different individual characters on the sub-sectoral industries, and thus we may find out the over as well as the sub-sectoral determinant factors between EC and TC. If a sub-sectoral industry outperforms in EC, catch-up effect is much more important to enhance its environmental performance. Based on this argument, we shall deduce the leader companies as the benchmark for the less productive companies. For the same reason, it a sub-sector outperforms in TC, it should find out the leading innovative company to enhance its productivity. Therefore, at the end of second stage, we report on innovator companies for each sector that are worthy of benchmarking using the concept of technical change.

Discuss and compare about advantages of used method with other current methods, why this methods? Why other method not? Need to validate the results with other methods.

Response: We added M-W test which compare normal DDF and sequential DDF so that appeal reason to use Sequential DEA.

To support statistic difference between GDDF and SGDDF, we conducted a Mann-Whitney test to check the null hypothesis of no group difference. As shown in Table 3 , the M-W test statistic shows a p-value of 0.000, and we can reject the null hypothesis, concluding a significant difference between GDDF and SGDDF.

The title should be modified based on method, its mean need to add the in-used method in the title. 

Response: We changed title as you suggested. Not only adding based on Sequential DEA, original title is also revised due to other reviewer’s comment.

Need to add description on CO2, GHG, etc. For example, Greenhouse Gas (GHG)

Response: We added description of GHG and CO2.

In general, studies on the E&E field have extracted pure CO2 values under the IPCC guidelines by using a macro type of data such as fuel [13,23,33] consumption rate. However, CO2 data were unavailable in Korea; thus, we used the numeric values from the GHG emissions data, which includes other gases such as methane, nitrogen, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorinated compounds, and sulfur hexafluoride.

Reviewer 3 Report

Consider comments in the entire text.

Please consider revising the English in the title for clarity

Abstract: remove the term “paper” from abstract

Instead try to better follow instructions:  https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability/instructions

“Abstract: The abstract should be a total of about 200 words maximum. The      abstract should be a single paragraph and should follow the style of      structured abstracts, but without headings: 1) Background: Place the      question addressed in a broad context and highlight the purpose of the      study; 2) Methods: Describe briefly the main methods or treatments      applied. Include any relevant preregistration numbers, and species and      strains of any animals used. 3) Results: Summarize the article's main      findings; and 4) Conclusion: Indicate the main conclusions or      interpretations. The abstract should be an objective representation of the      article: it must not contain results which are not presented and      substantiated in the main text and should not exaggerate the main      conclusions.”

Revise “ ‘no technical regress’”?

Revise nuclear expressions: “relatively well”

Remove all “we” and other personal references

Be always clear: to what are authors referring to? “7 sub-sectors”

If this essentially a mathematical paper, looking at abstract, better contextualize the subject and add more quantitative data

Keywords: never use abbreviations alone or terms that alone mean nothing…

“ ETS;” “ Index;” “ Innovator firms”: revise English and in what context?!

Introduction: abbreviations are presented AFTER definition, not before…

Authors need to revise the entire text because the reference style was not followed, so I cannot see what was really cited: author year in your style…

Oh, I see now that references start later on, so, all stated before has no references, even when citing entities: not possible…

No footnotes should be used.

The paragraphs new to be connected for the text to be fluid, eliminate new paragraphs as much as possible and better connect text

Please refer to work or study instead of “paper”

This kind of statements belong to the end of conclusions…

Remove: “The remainder of this paper is organized as follows.”

The number of references in the Introduction section is extremely scarce…

Ass seen until now, the structure of the manuscript needs to change, I would strongly advise authors to look at several samples (not one or two)

Section 2:

revise “As usual, the model”

assure that the absence of citations (to be presented immediately before each equation is introduced in the text by its number; everywhere in all cases: figures, tables, etc) in mathematical data means complete originality, have authors stated from zero, at the start?

Then enhance originality and novelty…

There are rules to be followed in mathematical presentation: italics, definition of parameters after EACH equation, and units added when available, inside “()”

Be consistent in text size/type, etc

Again, please check samples

In a journal like Sustainability, the presentation of mathematical data must be further contextualized, in the scope of the text, not only at the introduction, otherwise texts are more appropriate to specific mathematical journals.

I would also suggest revising headings… “Characteristics of Data and Empirical Results”

Or “3.2. sector classification”?!

In my perspective captions must be complete self-explanatory, it is not the case:

“Table 1. Descriptive statistics.” Or “Table 2. Sector classification.”… the same name as the heading above…

There must be a reference number for sources too:

“Sources: Greenhouse Gas Inventory & Research Center of Korea (http://www.gir.go.kr/)”

“DART: Data Analysis, Retrieval, and Transfer System (http://dart.fss.or.kr/)”

The style used in Figure 1, as example is completely outdated (excel or similar…). See that there are many ways to improve the graphics:

remove horizontal lines

add label to axis

format numbers similarly (and with the same number of digits)

diminish interval number. Etc, etc

see that the use of abbreviations inside should be contextualized so the reader does not have to look for information…

caption…

Also in a table, the use of abbreviations should be added in notes below the table

Use conclusions (plural)

Use a similar structure to the one used in abstract:

Brief contextualization

Brief methodology

Findings

Practical implications

See that English needs complete proofreading: “First, fortunately,” both in terms of English as assertiveness in scientific language…

“Although this paper offers several implications,”

Conclusions should be smaller and presented in a fluid and completely connected text, without new and new paragraphs.

Findings must be highlighted and quantitative data added.

Overall, I believe the manuscript needs significant further work to be considered relevant and citable…

I do not understand this sentence; does it relate to the work or this paper?! It is already published then?

The work may be awesome but authors need to translate it into a relevant scientic text…

“Acknowledgments: This paper was awarded the 2018 KEI_International Paper & Idea Competition 369 Award. Inha University Research Fund (59224-01) supported this work.”

References: abbreviate journal names as requested and add doi

Add more references and update references (2016, 2017, 2018: more)

Remember, I am judging the entire text, not the work.

Author Response

Consider comments in the entire text.

 Please consider revising the English in the title for clarity

Response: We really tried our best to enhance all the contents with much qualitative rewriting as well as the Professional English Proof Reading service. To prove this enhanced English style and grammar, we attached ‘Certificate of English Editing’. We changed title in more clear way, as you suggested.

Abstract: remove the term “paper” from abstract

Response: We changed ‘paper’ to ‘study’. Now, no ‘paper’ in manuscript.

Instead try to better follow instructions:  https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability/instructions

“Abstract: The abstract should be a total of about 200 words maximum. The      abstract should be a single paragraph and should follow the style of      structured abstracts, but without headings: 1) Background: Place the      question addressed in a broad context and highlight the purpose of the      study; 2) Methods: Describe briefly the main methods or treatments      applied. Include any relevant preregistration numbers, and species and      strains of any animals used. 3) Results: Summarize the article's main      findings; and 4) Conclusion: Indicate the main conclusions or      interpretations. The abstract should be an objective representation of the      article: it must not contain results which are not presented and      substantiated in the main text and should not exaggerate the main      conclusions.”

Revise “ ‘no technical regress’”?

Response: Here, ‘no technical regress’ assumption implies no deterioration of technical change (TC index). In this assumption, production frontier must not be shrink over time. But We removed this terminology from abstract.

Revise unclear expressions: “relatively well”

Response: We removed this expression.

Remove all “we” and other personal references

 Response: We changed the sentences with “we” in different way as much as possible.

Be always clear: to what are authors referring to? “7 sub-sectors”

Response: We changed “7 sub-sectors” -> seven sub-sectors based on the individual sectoral differences among the firms. It implies that all the firms on the research subject shall be categorized one of these 7 sub-sectors..

If this essentially a mathematical paper, looking at abstract, better contextualize the subject and add more quantitative data

We made much enhanced efforts to facilitate our arguments in the context. All the text is also gone through the professional English proof reading services. In the process, we explained much more in details for the core conceptual logical structure.

 Keywords: never use abbreviations alone or terms that alone mean nothing…

“ ETS;” “ Index;” “ Innovator firms”: revise English and in what context?!

 Response: We changed as you revised. à Environmental Efficiency; Emission Trading Scheme (ETS); Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions; Innovative Firms

Introduction: abbreviations are presented AFTER definition, not before…

 Response: We changed as you revised. à Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emission Trading Scheme (ETS), directional distance function (DDF) Environment and Energy field (E&E) Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA)

Authors need to revise the entire text because the reference style was not followed, so I cannot see what was really cited: author year in your style…Oh, I see now that references start later on, so, all stated before has no references, even when citing entities: not possible…

 Response: We changed as much as possible for the reference setting based on the journal forms. If the sentence requires some subjective arguments and/or numeric interpretation, we certainly used the citation as a reference.

No footnotes should be used.

 Response: We moved our footnotes into the main contents.

The paragraphs new to be connected for the text to be fluid, eliminate new paragraphs as much as possible and better connect text

Response: We got the professional English proof reading services. We attached the certificate of professional English proof reading service. The contents are much more enhanced its logical structure.. 

Please refer to work or study instead of “paper” This kind of statements belong to the end of conclusions… Remove: “The remainder of this paper is organized as follows.”

 Response: We changed all ‘paper’ to ‘study’ and removed referred paragraph.

 The number of references in the Introduction section is extremely scarce…

 Response: Because other authors also commented, we created Literature reviews chapter with more recent references.

As seen until now, the structure of the manuscript needs to change, I would strongly advise authors to look at several samples (not one or two)

 Section 2:

revise “As usual, the model”

 Response : We changed “As usual---“ à Based on the traditional approach to the production function, the model begins with the basic three inputs

Then enhance originality and novelty… -> We enhanced much based on the professional English proof reading service.

There are rules to be followed in mathematical presentation: italics, definition of parameters after EACH equation, and units added when available, inside “()”

Be consistent in text size/type, etc -> We checked all the equation style and text fonts, if there is any style issues remained, then MDPI will correct at the end of review process.

Again, please check samples -> We checked all the style and form of the journal, and MDPI shall give us the detailed correction at the end of review process. Our paper may not have any problem in samples.

 In a journal like Sustainability, the presentation of mathematical data must be further contextualized, in the scope of the text, not only at the introduction, otherwise texts are more appropriate to specific mathematical journals.

We did our best to rewrite all the text based on the support by an American native professionals. We published more than 10 papers in Sustainability, and especially as one of the editorial board members, I did my best for the appropriate text structure!

I would also suggest revising headings… “Characteristics of Data and Empirical Results”

Or “3.2. sector classification”?!

 Response: We integrated 3.1 and 3.2 under the new title of “3.1. Data and their characteristics

In my perspective captions must be complete self-explanatory, it is not the case:

“Table 1. Descriptive statistics.” Or “Table 2. Sector classification.”… the same name as the heading above…

Response: We changed title of Table 2, “Sector classification”- > Table 2. Sectoral categorization. 

There must be a reference number for sources too: “Sources: Greenhouse Gas Inventory & Research Center of Korea (http://www.gir.go.kr/)” “DART: Data Analysis, Retrieval, and Transfer System (http://dart.fss.or.kr/)”

 Response: We added reference number for them.

The style used in Figure 1, as example is completely outdated (excel or similar…). See that there are many ways to improve the graphics:

remove horizontal lines

add label to axis

format numbers similarly (and with the same number of digits)

diminish interval number. Etc, etc

Response: We changed them based on your comments.

see that the use of abbreviations inside should be contextualized so the reader does not have to look for information…

caption… Also in a table, the use of abbreviations should be added in notes below the table

 Response: We added note in every table and figure for abbreviations and carefully checked whether there is abbreviations without enough explanations. For sectors’ name, since there is no specific name, we left notice line 281. -> We explained all the sectors name and its categorical member companies in the text as follows,

“All the individual manufacturing companies are categorized in 7 sub- sectors as shown in Table 2.”

Use conclusions (plural)

Use a similar structure to the one used in abstract:

Brief contextualization

Brief methodology

Findings

Practical implications  

Response -> We reflected all these short remarks in our newly rewritten sentences. Because of professional proof reading service by native speaker, all these issues are well settled down, we hope!

 See that English needs complete proofreading: “First, fortunately,” both in terms of English as assertiveness in scientific language…

“Although this paper offers several implications,” -> Based on the professional English proof reading service, we changed all the ambiguous terminology, words, and sentences more clearly in professional way. For this purpose, we attached “the Certificate of Professional English Proof Reading Service”

Conclusions should be smaller and presented in a fluid and completely connected text, without new and new paragraphs.

Findings must be highlighted and quantitative data added.

 Overall, I believe the manuscript needs significant further work to be considered relevant and citable…

 Response: We revised conclusions based on conclusion based on reviewers’ comment.

As a developing country becoming an advanced economy, Korea has emphasized rapid economic development. However, there have been serious air pollution disasters nationwide and thus it is urgent for the Korean government to find workable environmentally friendly economic policies. This research analyzed the feasibility of the Korean government’s environmental policies by focusing on the ETS. The main findings from the empirical tests can be summarized as follows.  …………………

Since the Korean government hosted the Green Climate Fund in Incheon, it has made great efforts to enhance its environmentally friendly green growth. Nonetheless, the research shows that unilateral measures such as the ETS may have problems and thus it needs more precisely differentiated environmental regulation for each industry. Moreover, the research results support the idea that green technology innovation is a key factor for promoting growth in the green economy. The benchmarking firms definitely play a leading role in promoting innovation activities, and, thus, more performance-oriented incentives for these leading firms could result in a trickle-down effect in green technology. Although this study offers several implications, it still has some limitations. First, as the non-parametric approach used in this study does not offer statistical reliability, it might be necessary to use the bootstrapping approach. Second, the Meta-frontier approach may provide a more in-depth analysis in considering heterogeneity across the diverse sectors.

I do not understand this sentence; does it relate to the work or this paper?! It is already published then?

The work may be awesome but authors need to translate it into a relevant scientic text…

“Acknowledgments: This paper was awarded the 2018 KEI_International Paper & Idea Competition 369 Award. Inha University Research Fund (59224-01) supported this work.”

 Response: This research was presented in the contest, but not published elsewhere. As the winner of mentioned competition, the host asked the authors to mention the host of contest, KEI (host), in acknowledgement when publishing.

References: abbreviate journal names as requested and add doi

Add more references and update references (2016, 2017, 2018: more)

 Response: We added references after 2016 such as…

Choi, Yongrok; Yu, Yanni; Lee, Hyoung Seok. A Study on the Sustainable Performance of the Steel Industry in Korea Based on SBM-DEA. Sustainability, 2018, 10.1: 173.

Tian, Peng; Lin, Boqiang. Regional technology gap in energy utilization in China's light industry sector: Non-parametric meta-frontier and sequential DEA methods. Journal of Cleaner Production, 2018. 178: 880-889

Yu, Yanni; Qian, Tao; Du, Limin. Carbon productivity growth, technological innovation, and technology gap change of coal-fired power plants in China. Energy Policy, 2017, 109: 479-487.

Round  2

Reviewer 1 Report

The explanations of your responses to the comments 11, 20, and 21 should be briefly added to the manuscript. The readers should also understand those.

Author Response

Thank you for your professional advice. Each of your comment was helpful to enhance quality of paper.

Point 1: The explanations of your responses to the comments 11, 20, and 21 should be briefly added to the manuscript. The readers should also understand those.

Previous comments 11, 20 and 21 and our responses are as follows.

Point 1-1: 11. L79, page 3: “Thus, the aim of this paper is to examine the overall environmental performance of Korean manufacturing industry in a more dynamic perspective.”: please explain the “dynamic perspective.” How? What “dynamic” mean? About what aspects?

Response: With regard to 11, it was about explaining dynamic perspective. (red part is added)

àSince, the aim of this study is to evaluate the overall environmental performance of the Korean manufacturing industry from a more dynamic perspective, we will analyze the overall as well as sub-sectoral manufacturing industries’ performance in stepwise approach. Here, Dynamic perspective stands for analysis with time-series data. It is different from cross sectional analysis in that it is possible to focus changing over times.

Point 1-2: 20. L171-172, Page 5: “The EC index in the Equation (6) measures the “catching-up” effect that measures environmental efficiency changes for a DMU (firm) between the period t and t+1.”: Unclear.

Response: With regard to 20, it was about explaining unclear EC change (catching up effect). We added explanation.

àEC captures the movement of a DMU toward the contemporaneous environmental benchmark frontier. If EC >1, it means that there is an efficiency gain between t and t+1, and vice versa (efficiency loss) if EC<1. If EC=1, it means there is no efficiency change in consecutive years. That is to say, EC stands for distance change between specific DMU and efficient frontier.

Point 1-3: L177, Page 5: “TC is always more than unity”: what does this mean?

Response: With regard to 21, it was about explaining “TC is always more than unity” We changed ‘unity’ as ‘1’ for readers’ understanding and emphasized assumption of sequential DEA again.

àHowever, as mentioned, TC is always more than value ‘1’  in this study. It is because there is an assumption ‘no technical regress’ under sequential DEA.

With our best efforts, we really hope your comments are well reflected in this revised paper. We appreciate your comments again.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

 - Please add the description on all keywords in the text, some keywords: GHG, IEA, CO2, GDP, OECD, etc.

- There are some grammatical errors in the text, for example, "we will analyze the overall" when do you have a plan to analysis? Please use the past or present verbs instead of the future verbs.

- In abstract, "the south Korean" should be "South Korean".

- In line 10, "Manufacturing industry" should be "The manufacturing industry".

- Some formulas do not have a number, for example, lines 148-149.

- The conclusion is too long, it is better to divide the conclusion to two parts including: 

- Discussion

- Conclusion

- Do not use the tracking change in the final version. For example, lines 146, 150 etc.

- The size of formulas are too small, need to rewrite or revise again.

- The formulas of 7a, 7b, 7c, should be changed to 7, 8 and 9. 

- There is a big space between table 4 and figure 2.

- Please follow a new format regarding the author contributions:

Author Contributions: For research articles with several authors, a short paragraph specifying their individual contributions must be provided. The following statements should be used “conceptualization, X.X. and Y.Y.; methodology, X.X.; software, X.X.; validation, X.X., Y.Y. and Z.Z.; formal analysis, X.X.; investigation, X.X.; resources, X.X.; data curation, X.X.; writing—original draft preparation, X.X.; writing—review and editing, X.X.; visualization, X.X.; supervision, X.X.; project administration, X.X.; funding acquisition, Y.Y.”, please turn to the CRediT taxonomy for the term explanation. Authorship must be limited to those who have contributed substantially to the work reported.

- References list is not fit to the journal format. 

- Edit "That is the reason Shestalova [15] adopt", line 101. 

- The references are old, there are few references from 2017 and 2018 in the text. Need to update references again.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 2 Comments

 First of all, thank you for your professional advice. Based on your suggestions, we have carefully considered and revised again.

Point 1: Please add the description on all keywords in the text, some keywords: GHG, IEA, CO2, GDP, OECD, etc.
Response: We added descriptions for each terminology without abbreviation.

àCarbon Dioxide (‘CO2’)/ Greenhouse Gas (‘GHG’)/ Gross Domestic Production (GDP)/ Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)

Point 2: There are some grammatical errors in the text, for example, "we will analyze the overall" when do you have a plan to analysis? Please use the past or present verbs instead of the future verbs.

Response: We changed some words to present tense; will analyzeàanalyzes, will focusàfocus and grammatical error such as Line 103 adoptà adopted; Line 33 one of the exemplary caseà one of the exemplary cases

Point 3: In abstract, "the south Korean" should be "South Korean".

Response: We revised it.

Point 4: In line 10, "Manufacturing industry" should be "The manufacturing industry".

Response: We revised it.

Point 5: Some formulas do not have a number, for example, lines 148-149.

Response: We should say that these are not equations but assumptions, so normally, these are numbered and expressed as we did.

Zhang, Ning; Wang, Bing; Chen, Zhongfei. Carbon emissions reductions and technology gaps in the world's factory, 1990–2012, energy policy. 2016

Choi, Y.; H. Lee. Are Emissions Trading Policies Sustainable? A Study of the Petrochemical Industry in Korea. Sustainability. 2016

Point 6: The conclusion is too long, it is better to divide the conclusion to two parts including: 

- Discussion

- Conclusion

Response: Based on the other comments, we shortened conclusion little by excluding ordering words such as “First, Second and Third”, and put summary paragraphs together. Also, some arguments are redundant and we deleted as well. Thus, it is much more condensed form and we did not divide it into two chapters.

Point 7: Do not use the tracking change in the final version. For example, lines 146, 150 etc.

Response: We excluded tracking change.

Point 8: The size of formulas are too small, need to rewrite or revise again.

Response: We made them bigger Equation 2 to 6 and the rest of them are same with manuscript font size 10. Although we tried to unify size, if still there exists any problem, we will revise it.

Point 9: The formulas of 7a, 7b, 7c, should be changed to 7, 8 and 9. 

Response: We changed as you suggested.

Point 10: There is a big space between table 4 and figure 2.

Response: We revised it.

Point 11: Please follow a new format regarding the author contributions:

Author Contributions: For research articles with several authors, a short paragraph specifying their individual contributions must be provided. The following statements should be used “conceptualization, X.X. and Y.Y.; methodology, X.X.; software, X.X.; validation, X.X., Y.Y. and Z.Z.; formal analysis, X.X.; investigation, X.X.; resources, X.X.; data curation, X.X.; writing—original draft preparation, X.X.; writing—review and editing, X.X.; visualization, X.X.; supervision, X.X.; project administration, X.X.; funding acquisition, Y.Y.”, please turn to the CRediT taxonomy for the term explanation. Authorship must be limited to those who have contributed substantially to the work reported.

Response: We revised it as follows.

Author Contributions: For this research paper, two authors discussed fully and shared all the related sub-parts of the research such as data collection, analysis and writing down the paper, etc. equally.

Point 12: References list is not fit to the journal format. 

Response: We again checked references list’s format based on published Sustainability articles, with regard to Journal name, actually, we left journals’ entire name to prevent mistake. For some of them, we used abbreviate names which we are sure. Following note is MDPI guideline.

Point 13: Edit "That is the reason Shestalova [20] adopt", line 101. 

Response: We edited paragraph follows.

àTo overcome this limitation, Shestalova [20] adopted Sequential DEA to evaluate TFP growth of manufacturing industries in 11 OECD countries

Point 14: The references are old, there are few references from 2017 and 2018 in the text. Need to update references again

Response: We added recent references and webpages such as;

Choi, Y.; Yu, Y.; Lee, H. A Study on the Sustainable Performance of the Steel Industry in Korea Based on SBM-DEA. Sustainability 2018, 10, 173; DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/su10010173

Tian, P; Lin, B. Regional technology gap in energy utilization in China's light industry sector: Non-parametric meta-frontier and sequential DEA methods. Journal of Cleaner Production 2018, 178, 880-889; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.01.017

Yu, Y; Qian, Tao; Du, L. Carbon productivity growth, technological innovation, and technology gap change of coal-fired power plants in China. Energy Policy 2017, 109, 479-487; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2017.05.040

Choi, Y.; Liu, Y.; Lee, H. The economy impacts of Korean ETS with an emphasis on sectoral coverage based on a CGE approach. Energy Policy 2017, 109, 835-844; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2017.06.039

Wu, L; Chen, Y; Feylizadeh, M; Liu, W. Estimation of China's macro-carbon rebound effect: Method of integrating Data Envelopment Analysis production model and sequential Malmquist-Luenberger

IPCC special report, Available online : https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/(accessed on 30 January 2019).

Worldbank, Available online: ttps://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NV.IND.MANF.ZS?year_high_desc=true/(accessed on 30 January 2019).

We really appreciate your kind, precise comments. With our best, we tried to reflect your suggestions, and we hope it works well this time. We appreciate your comments again.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Consider comments in the entire text.

Revise word duplication “increase”:

“Although this is a small increase, the average after 2015 showed a 0.8% increase”

Personal expression such as we, are still in the text everywhere… Use FIND tool…

“Remove all “we” and other personal references

Response: We changed the sentences with “we” in different way as much as possible.”

This particular comment relates content, nothing to do with English editing…

“If this essentially a mathematical paper, looking at abstract, better contextualize the subject and add more quantitative data

We made much enhanced efforts to facilitate our arguments in the context. All the text is also gone through the professional English proof reading services. In the process, we explained much more in details for the core conceptual logical structure.”

Keywords: still general… “

 Environmental Efficiency;” or “Innovative Firms”

AS mentioned previously, entities still need proper referencing.

Authors only use references at the end of the introduction, not possible…

Already addressed in previous revisions…

“We summarize this study’s unique contributions as follows. First, to the best of our knowledge, very few studies have used individual company-level data and their emission volumes in this field [1-3].”

Authors? Or reviewers?

“The number of references in the Introduction section is extremely scarce…

Response: Because other authors also commented, we created Literature reviews chapter with more recent references.

”

Literature review should be inside Introduction, not in a separate section

See that English is wrong, only as example: one author and then “adopt”?

 “That is the reason Shestalova [15] adopt”

I do not understand the answers from the authors, it has nothing to do with Englisg editing

“Then enhance originality and novelty… -> We enhanced much based on the professional English proof reading service.”

As a reviewer I approve the paper if it follows rules, I do not see what is done later on…

“Be consistent in text size/type, etc -> We checked all the equation style and text fonts, if there is any style issues remained, then MDPI will correct at the end of review process.”

Samples refers to examples from the journal…

?!

“Again, please check samples -> We checked all the style and form of the journal, and MDPI shall give us the detailed correction at the end of review process. Our paper may not have any problem in samples.”

Authors are entitled to their own opinion; the reviewer does not have to agree…

Things evolve and change.

“In a journal like Sustainability, the presentation of mathematical data must be further contextualized, in the scope of the text, not only at the introduction, otherwise texts are more appropriate to specific mathematical journals.

We did our best to rewrite all the text based on the support by an American native professionals. We published more than 10 papers in Sustainability, and especially as one of the editorial board members, I did my best for the appropriate text structure!”

I maintain comments:

“In my perspective captions must be complete self-explanatory, it is not the case:

“Table 1. Descriptive statistics.” Or “Table 2. Sector classification.”… the same name as the heading above…

Response: We changed title of Table 2, “Sector classification”- > Table 2. Sectoral categorization.”

Figure 1: I particularly do not like it. Abbreviations in a figure should relate specific information, so the reader does not have to look for and labels are below.

I would remove the background, as in other cases, figure 2…, etc

Again, change heading “Use conclusions (plural)”

I would remove “First” and “Second” from the text.

Again: “References: abbreviate journal names as requested”

My comments intend to assist the authors to improve the text.

Despite changes, I believe the manuscript may be improved, particularly in terms of linking text.

I can see that specific content should be linked to previous content because the text continues from there. Only as example: “As this ETS”

Specifically, introduction needs proper reference style

As seen, English still needs huge refinement...

There is no point in indicating the situations because they are extensive.

Example: “Since, the aim of this study”

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 3 Comments

Consider comments in the entire text.

First of all, thank you for your professional advice. It was a good chance to think about our research again. Based on your suggestions, we have carefully discussed and tried to revise to reflect on your comments for better paper.

Point 1: Revise word duplication “increase”:

“Although this is a small increase, the average after 2015 showed a 0.8% increase”

 Response: We changed as follows

àAlthough this is small, the average after 2015 showed a 0.8% increase

 Point 2: Personal expression such as we, are still in the text everywhere… Use FIND tool…

“Remove all “we” and other personal references

Response: We consulted with a native English professional editor for the use of “we” and he recommended that the use of “we” could be better if it much more clarifies the whole meaning of sentences. Sometimes, passive sentence may not transfer the clear meaning, and thus we have to use “we”, but most of cases, we changed “we” as a subject, with the passive sentences without the word, “we”.

 Point 3: This particular comment relates content, nothing to do with English editing…

“If this essentially a mathematical paper, looking at abstract, better contextualize the subject and add more quantitative data

Response: We tried to add more quantitative data such as EC, TC index value, but also tried to keep Abstract form you suggested. Following abstract is revised one.

This study’s aim is to examine the environmental performance of South Korean manufacturing industry and suggest performance-oriented policies. The manufacturing industry is classified into seven sub-sectors based on individual sectoral differences among the firms. For this purpose, a sequential generalized directional distance function and the Sequential Malmquist-Luenburger (SML) index are used with the assumption of no deterioration in technology over time. The SML is decomposed into two indices: efficiency change (EC) and technical change (TC). The empirical results showed an average increase of 0.3% in environmental productivity measured by the SML over the whole period. Although this is small, the average after 2015 showed a 0.8% increase, implying that the Emission Trading Scheme policy enhanced environmental productivity. From the decomposition of the SML, it is also found that the EC index (-1.1%) is comparatively lower than the TC index (1.5%) for seven years, implying that the innovation effect leads the environmental productivity of the Korean manufacturing industry. With regard to individual sectors, the seven sub-sectors showed quite different patterns in their performance. Therefore, not only should firms in each sector make an effort to enhance their performance, but the government also needs to support specialized measures to enhance firms’ overall competitiveness.

 Point 4: Keywords: still general… “

 Environmental Efficiency;” or “Innovative Firms”

 Response: We changed key words with more specific terms. “Environmental Efficiency; Sequential Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA); Emission Trading Scheme (ETS); Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions; Innovative Firms’ -> Environmental Efficiency; Sequential Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA); Manufacturing Industry, Customizing Policy; Innovation Effect

Point 5: AS mentioned previously, entities still need proper referencing.

Authors only use references at the end of the introduction, not possible…

Already addressed in previous revisions…

 Response: We added more citations across introduction chapter to make referred contents more feasible.

-> For example in “Introduction”, At the recent general assembly meeting --- the “Keeping global warming at 1.5˚C” special report [1]. --- Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) environmental performance reviews (2017) [2], --- carbon emissions by 37% by 2030 [3].

Point 6: Authors? Or reviewers?

“The number of references in the Introduction section is extremely scarce…

Response: We are sorry for the miss-typing. It should be reviewers, not authors.

Because other reviewers also commented, we created Literature reviews chapter with more recent references.”

Literature review should be inside Introduction, not in a separate section

 Response: When we submit this article, Introduction and Literature reviews were combined as one chapter of Introduction. However, there was another comment for us to divide it, therefore, we separated it. Nonetheless, there is no difference in the logical structure. Even so, we added proper references in introduction due to this division.

Point 7: See that English is wrong, only as example: one author and then “adopt”?

 “That is the reason Shestalova [15] adopt”

Response: We are very sorry for this wrong word. We checked again for all sentences by using the menu of “Check/spelling & grammar checker”. We revised some present tense and grammar errors as follows;

Line 69 will analyzeàanalyzes

Line 70 will focusàfocus

Line 103 adoptà adopted

Line 33 one of the exemplary caseà one of the exemplary cases

 Point 8: I do not understand the answers from the authors, it has nothing to do with Englisg editing

“Then enhance originality and novelty… 

Response: To emphasize originality and novelty, we revised contribution parts at the end of Introduction and in Conclusion with unique findings on the research as well as its practical implications as follows.

This study may result in the following unique contributions. First, the top-down approach by the Korean government may not result in the effective GHG emission abatement due to the lack of field-oriented customization on the regulatory target on the emission. In order to evaluate this biased effect on the manufacturing sub-industries, we do use the individual company-level data and their emission volumes in this field. To the best of our knowledge, very few studies have used these data up to now. For this perspective, in this research, the recent company-level data is used. This will help enhance the reliability of the empirical results and the resulting policy suggestions in terms of more-company or sub-industry level perspectives. Second, the seven years’ data cover almost all manufacturing sectors, which provides more implications than a single-industry or cross-sectional approach. This panel data analysis will highlight the driving factor of the trend of environmental performance and will provide cross-sectional benchmarking suggestions, as well. From this panel evaluation, the most efficient company in the group as well as in the whole manufacturing industry shall be found as the benchmarking case for catch-up effect and innovation effect.  This more specific, customized suggestion on the individual company level shall be the most important unique contribution of the research. Third, from the methodological perspective, we adopt the concept of sequential generalized DDF (SGDDF), which is suitable for reflecting environmentally sensitive production in more field-oriented terms. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first trial adopting this methodology to explore the Korean manufacturing industry.

As a reviewer I approve the paper if it follows rules, I do not see what is done later on…

Point 9: “Be consistent in text size/type, etc 

 Response: We changed all the contents to be consistent with the guideline of journal text size/type as follows. Followings are the things we changed

Size/Type: Overall manuscript: Palatino Linotype font size 10

  Equation 4, 5, 6 : font size 12 since there was reviewer’s comment that they need be bigger.

  Table: I made table design changed according to according to published Sustainability. Made some line thicker added thin line, and font size is 9 except Table 7 (Companies name is 8 for better showing). 

Point 10: Samples refers to examples from the journal…?!

“Again, please check samples 

For example, we referred the following samples from the journal.

Response: We read following Sustainability articles, Actually, we started to write this article based on previous article samples.

Choi, Yongrok; Yu, Yanni; Lee, Hyoung Seok. A Study on the Sustainable Performance of the Steel Industry in Korea Based on SBM-DEA. Sustainability, 2018

Choi, Y.; H. Lee. Are Emissions Trading Policies Sustainable? A Study of the Petrochemical Industry in Korea. Sustainability. 2016

Zhang, Ning; Kim, Jong-Dae. Measuring sustainability by energy efficiency analysis for Korean power companies: a sequential slacks-based efficiency measure. Sustainability, 2014

Choi, Yongrok; Wang, Na. The Economic Efficiency of Urban Land Use with a Sequential Slack-Based Model in Korea. Sustainability, 2017

From this process, reference style was revised a lot especially.

Authors are entitled to their own opinion; the reviewer does not have to agree…

Things evolve and change.

Point 11: “In a journal like Sustainability, the presentation of mathematical data must be further contextualized, in the scope of the text, not only at the introduction, otherwise texts are more appropriate to specific mathematical journals.

Response: We added more explanations for readers who is not expert in this field for instance,

EC captures the movement of a DMU toward the contemporaneous environmental benchmark frontier. If EC >1, it means that there is an efficiency gain between t and t+1, and vice versa (efficiency loss) if EC<1. If EC=1, it means there is no efficiency change in consecutive years. That is to say, EC stands for distance change between specific DMU and efficient frontier.--> more explanation about EC

Because the aim of this study is to evaluate the overall environmental performance of the Korean manufacturing industry from a more dynamic perspective, we will analyze the overall as well as sub-sectoral manufacturing industries’ performance in stepwise approach. Here, Dynamic perspective stands for analysis with time-series data. It is different from cross sectional analysis in that it is possible to focus performance change over times. à more explanation about dynamic change

However, as mentioned, TC is always more than value ‘1’  in this study. It is because there is an assumption ‘no technical regress’ under sequential DEA.--> We changed unity to ‘1’ for readers’ understanding.

I maintain comments:

Point 12: “In my perspective captions must be complete self-explanatory, it is not the case:

“Table 1. Descriptive statistics.” Or “Table 2. Sector classification.”… the same name as the heading above…

Response: Since Table 1. “Descriptive Statistics” is very common terminology for the statistical basic explanations on data, we have to follow this traditional terminology. But, we changed title of Table 2, “Sector classification”- > Table 2. Sectoral categorization.”

Point 13: Figure 1: I particularly do not like it. Abbreviations in a figure should relate specific information, so the reader does not have to look for and labels are below.

I would remove the background, as in other cases, figure 2…, etc

 Response: We moved Figure 2 right above Table 2 so that readers do not look for information of sectors and had labels (in graph) located below.

Point 14: Again, change heading “Use conclusions (plural)”

I would remove “First” and “Second” from the text.

 Response: We removed First, Second and third in conclusion, combined them.

Point 15: Again: “References: abbreviate journal names as requested”

Response: Yes we now realized there are many problems in references’ style. We tried to follow guideline as much as possible, some journals’ name which are not sure, left entire name according to MDPI guideline(follow note)

Note: If you are not sure how to abbreviate a particular journal title, please leave the entire title. The Editorial Office will abbreviate those journal titles appropriately.

 My comments intend to assist the authors to improve the text.

Point 16: Despite changes, I believe the manuscript may be improved, particularly in terms of linking text.

 I can see that specific content should be linked to previous content because the text continues from there. Only as example: “As this ETS”

 Response: We admit there is logically missing link in introduction chapter. So we tried to fill this gap and rewrote it as follows.

However, firms can buy or sell permits when they face a shortage or surplus of emission allowances . The ETS covers 5 sectors and 23 sub-industries; 525 firms joined the ETS in 2015 and they account for 66% of CO2 emissions produced in Korea. Among the 5 major sectors, the manufacturing industry sector contributes 32.5% of the Gross Domestic Production (GDP) and 27.5% of GHG emissions in Korea. Furthermore, Korean manufacturing industry is ranked 5th in the world in 2017 with value added 422,064.51 US dollar (The world bank). Thus, Korean manufacturing industry is highly related with national competence, and is therefore our focus in this study. Moreover, in order to face the current serious challenges from China in the form of extremely competitive costs, the manufacturing industry needs to acquire a more advanced environmentally competitive structure. Nevertheless, there is little literature to date exploring this industry from an environmental perspective, especially on the individual company level.

To manage the GHG emission in this manufacturing industry, Korean government introduced ETS. Therefore, it is very important to evaluate the feasibility of ETS policies on manufacturing companies.  As this ETS claims a “top-down approach” by the Korean government, it raises the following intrinsic questions for its sustainable performance: Will the ETS be helpful in maintaining national competitiveness? Are emission allocations for each sector reasonable? Which sectors are more beneficial or detrimental to the environment under the current ETS scenario?

To answer all these questions and make feasible suggestions for environmental policies, the first stage of this study will analyze the effect of ETS policies on environmental productivity, while in the second stage, we will focus on the determinants of environmental productivity. In the first stage, we shall focus on the policy effects on manufacturing industry over time, because there may be some bias in the top-down approach of the ETS and thus the selective limits may work better at least in the initial stage of ETS. In the second stage, we aim to develop some practical proposals for the selective concentration policies. Top-down approach on the ETS target for the manufacturing industry may result in the overload or shortage of individual emission abatement potentials, implying the more customized regulatory policies on the subsectors of the manufacturing industries based on the individual conditions and internal characters of the sub-sectors of manufacturing industries. To find out the more customized solutions on the individual company level, we adopt the directional distance function (DDF) for evaluating the environmental performance of the manufacturing sub-industry sectors for the last seven years.

Point 17:Specifically, introduction needs proper reference style

  Response: As mentioned above, we added much more appropriate citations across introduction chapter.

As seen, English still needs huge refinement...

There is no point in indicating the situations because they are extensive.

Example: “Since, the aim of this study”

Response: We revised Introduction chapter totally, especially with the more precise, practical implications of this research as follows (just a part of revised contents).

To manage the GHG emission in this manufacturing industry, Korean government introduced ETS. Therefore, it is very important to evaluate the feasibility of ETS policies on manufacturing companies.  As this ETS claims a “top-down approach” by the Korean government, it raises the following intrinsic questions for its sustainable performance: Will the ETS be helpful in maintaining national competitiveness? Are emission allocations for each sector reasonable? Which sectors are more beneficial or detrimental to the environment under the current ETS scenario?

To answer all these questions and make feasible suggestions for environmental policies, the first stage of this study analyzes the effect of ETS policies on environmental productivity, while in the second stage, we focus on the determinants of environmental productivity. In the first stage, we shall focus on the policy effects on manufacturing industry over time, because there may be some bias in the top-down approach of the ETS and thus the selective limits may work better at least in the initial stage of ETS. In the second stage, we aim to develop some practical proposals for the selective concentration policies. Top-down approach on the ETS target for the manufacturing industry may result in the overload or shortage of individual emission abatement potentials, implying the more customized regulatory policies on the subsectors of the manufacturing industries based on the individual conditions and internal characters of the sub-sectors of manufacturing industries. To find out the more customized solutions on the individual company level, we adopt the directional distance function (DDF) for evaluating the environmental performance of the manufacturing sub-industry sectors for the last seven years.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round  3

Reviewer 3 Report

Consider comments in the entire text.

A comment to show that English is weak, even after improvements:

“Although this is small, the average after 2015 showed a 0.8% increase”

Well, I do agree, impersonal language must be used, still there, 51 times…

“Point 2: Personal expression such as we, are still in the text everywhere… Use FIND tool…

“Remove all “we” and other personal references

Response: We consulted with a native English professional editor for the use of “we” and he recommended that the use of “we” could be better if it much more clarifies the whole meaning of sentences. Sometimes, passive sentence may not transfer the clear meaning, and thus we have to use “we”, but most of cases, we changed “we” as a subject, with the passive sentences without the word, “we”.”

To me keywords needs further contextualization, it as a question of looking at them and immediately be aware of content in background.

“ Keywords: Environmental Efficiency; Manufacturing Industry, Customizing Policy; Innovation Effect”

of what? Add more words to expressions…

I see that a set of equations is presented and treated like ONE: “(2)” for example, not usually done like this…

I maintain that captions needs more information… They are too short.

They are not enlightening nor assertive: “Sectoral acronym and its categorical companies”

Again: “Point 14: Again, change heading “Use conclusions (plural)””

I have difficulty in understanding these difficulties…

“Point 15: Again: “References: abbreviate journal names as requested”

Response: Yes we now realized there are many problems in references’ style. We tried to follow guideline as much as possible, some journals’ name which are not sure, left entire name according to MDPI guideline(follow note)”

Still there:

“As seen, English still needs huge refinement...”

More:

An example of important details:

“Emission Trading Scheme” used in abstract needs the abbreviation because it appears in the text later on…

“Emission Trading Scheme (ETS)”

It is about coherence.

Language needs scientific correction, that goes beyond English editing…

“the first stage of this study analyzes the effect of ETS policies”, this should not be stated like that…

See that if there are two separate introduction and literature review sections, and authors refer to the introduction at the end of section 1, section 2, should not again contain references to the aims, at least to me:

“Because the aim of this study is to evaluate the overall”

Some expressions have no number…

“We can express this assumption as follows.”

Assure that all citations are present in known equations…

Statements must always be clear and assertive, they are not:

“Figure 1 and Table 2 shows the final classification of this study.”

Singular or plural?

“Equation (7-9),”

Short statements like this do not aloe the text to be cohesive, cohesion lacks all over. It has to do with scientific language and clarity, necessary to produce a fluid text.

“From the TC index we obtained group innovators for each sector.”

I was so clear and detailed in previous revisions that I have no need to detail again.

Authors need to make an effort and further improve the manuscript.

All revisions were previously clear enough to all authors to improve.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 3 Comments

Consider comments in the entire text.

A comment to show that English is weak, even after improvements:

“Although this is small, the average after 2015 showed a 0.8% increase”. As attached in the first round of review process, we proved our paper for English with the “Certificate of Professional English Proof Reading Service”. We are really, really sorry for the several issues are not clarified as the Reviewer 3 pointed out. Nonetheless, most of issues raised by the reviewer may be covered by the support of Editorial secretary of the journal Sustainability, and thus, please do your best support for the paper to be processed further!

 Response: We changed this paragraph as follow

à “Although the overall average value is a little one, it showed a 0.8% increase after 2015”

Well, I do agree, impersonal language must be used, still there, 51 times…

“Point 2: Personal expression such as we, are still in the text everywhere… Use FIND tool…

“Remove all “we” and other personal references

Response: We consulted with a native English professional editor for the use of “we” and he recommended that the use of “we” could be better if it much more clarifies the whole meaning of sentences. Sometimes, passive sentence may not transfer the clear meaning, and thus we have to use “we”, but most of cases, we changed “we” as a subject, with the passive sentences without the word, “we”.”

  Response: We appreciate your kind, precise comments for the 51 times use of impersonal subject words. We do understand, the research paper needs the impersonal subject words for the objective description. Nonetheless, as the authors, we may need in some sentences to use “we”, because some of the contents are rather subjective arguments, new findings and proposed ideas. We certainly asked to the English proof reading service company to avoid to use the personal subjective words such as “we”, and got the answer we cannot and should not eliminate all “we” in our paper. We really ask the reviewer to understand this situation, and please, please do allow us to use “we”.

To me keywords needs further contextualization, it as a question of looking at them and immediately be aware of content in background.

“ Keywords: Environmental Efficiency; Manufacturing Industry, Customizing Policy; Innovation Effect”

of what? Add more words to expressions…

 Response: We changed and added keywords as follow.

à Manufacturing Industry; Sectoral Classification; Sequential DEA; Environmental Productivity; Catching-up Effect; Innovation Effect; Customizing Policy, Korea

I see that a set of equations is presented and treated like ONE: “(2)” for example, not usually done like this…

 Response:

 I maintain that captions needs more information… They are too short.

Response: We changed captions as follows

Figure 1. Seven groups and the percentage share of firms in each group

Table 2. Seven groups and their sub-industries

They are not enlightening nor assertive: “Sectoral acronym and its categorical companies”

 Response: We changed it to à ‘Seven groups and their sub-industries’

Again: “Point 14: Again, change heading “Use conclusions (plural)””

Response: We changed title of Chapter 5. Conclusion -> Conclusions

 “Point 15: Again: “References: abbreviate journal names as requested”

Response: We used abbreviated names for reference.

Still there:

“As seen, English still needs huge refinement...”

More:

An example of important details:

“Emission Trading Scheme” used in abstract needs the abbreviation because it appears in the text later on…

“Emission Trading Scheme (ETS)”

It is about coherence.

Response: We used abbreviation ETS in abstract. However, three following norms kept present style for readers’ understanding; Sequential Malmquist-Luenburger (SML) index efficiency change (EC) and technical change (TC.

Language needs scientific correction, that goes beyond English editing…

“the first stage of this study analyzes the effect of ETS policies”, this should not be stated like that…

 Response: We changed paragraph as follows

“in the first stage, we analyze the effect of ETS policies”

See that if there are two separate introduction and literature review sections, and authors refer to the introduction at the end of section 1, section 2, should not again contain references to the aims, at least to me:

“Because the aim of this study is to evaluate the overall”

  Response: We have to adjust and modify from “all the referees’ comments. Sometimes, these are contradictory each other, but we have to do reflect as much as possible. As the reviewer told to us, “at least to me”, we are sorry to follow the integration of the section 1 and 2, as well as following assertions.

Some expressions have no number…

“We can express this assumption as follows.”

  Response: We should say that these are not equations but assumptions, so normally, these are independent and expressed as we did.

Zhang, Ning; Wang, Bing; Chen, Zhongfei. Carbon emissions reductions and technology gaps in the world's factory, 1990–2012, energy policy. 2016

Choi, Y.; H. Lee. Are Emissions Trading Policies Sustainable? A Study of the Petrochemical Industry in Korea. Sustainability. 2016

Assure that all citations are present in known equations…

 Response: In order to assure that the facts in equations, we already made citations as much as possible. If the equations are the same as “a group”, we may not repeat over and over again for the same citations for assurance. It is common in the literature and thus we really hope the reviewer accept this fact.

Statements must always be clear and assertive, they are not:

“Figure 1 and Table 2 shows the final classification of this study.”

 Response: We changed paragraph as follow

Figure 1 shows share of seven individual group and Table 2 shows detail sub-industries under each group in this study.

Singular or plural?

“Equation (7-9),”

Response: We used plural words because it is based on Equation 7,8,9à “Equations (7-9),”

Short statements like this do not aloe the text to be cohesive, cohesion lacks all over. It has to do with scientific language and clarity, necessary to produce a fluid text.

“From the TC index we obtained group innovators for each sector.”

Response: We changed paragraph as follows

“From the TC index value and efficiencies of consecutive years, we could obtain group innovators for each sector.”

I was so clear and detailed in previous revisions that I have no need to detail again.

Authors need to make an effort and further improve the manuscript.

All revisions were previously clear enough to all authors to improve.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx