Review Reports - Can Financial Development Curb Carbon Emissions? Empirical Test Based on Spatial Perspective

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The topic of the article is clear and very interesting in the current economic context and the objective is very clear. In my opinion the paper is well written and the references are current. The literature review is very broad and appropriate to the topic.

Respect to the methodology and results seems adequate, but from my point of view, it is necessary include some suggestions to improve the paper.

In Model setting:

Models (1)-(4) should be presented in a table and with the advantages and disadvantages of each.

Furthermore, model (3) should be revised because it contains an error when including the dependent variable as an explanatory variable.

It is proposed to include table 5 in table 4 to synthesize the results.
It is proposed to integrate Tables 8-10 into a single table to synthesize the results.
It is proposed to synthesize the comments of sections 5.4-5.6

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Please check the attachment.

Best Regards,

Xueyang Liu

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authours

In reviewer manuscript the studies the impact of financial development on carbon emission intensity and its mechanism from both theoretical and empirical aspects. It as recognised that it is necessary to further support financial development, build large-scale financial centers, continue to optimize the structure of financial products and encourage the development of green finance. The financial development mainly reduces carbon emission intensity through technological innovation (9.5%) and structural optimization (12.15%).

However, I would expect the authors of both Chapter 3. "Influence mechanism" and Chapter 5. "Empirical test and discussion to present figures related to the scope of CO₂ emissions and the flow of financial turnover.

I also did not find a specific indication why the eastern region differs so significantly in the statistics from the central and western parts of China.. Please refer to the publication of Quanwen Liu, Sanmang Wu, Yalin Lei, Shantong Li, Li Li, Exploring spatial characteristics of city-level CO₂emissions in China and their influencing factors from global and local perspectives, Science of The Total Environment, Volume 754, 2021, 142206, ISSN 0048-9697, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.142206.

Please write CO₂

Best regards

Reviewer