From Neoclassical Economics to Common Good Economics

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

Thanks for the valuable opportunity to read your contribution.

It was a pleasure of mine.

It brings important insights and covers certain knowledge gap.

As its conclusive remarks state:

" ...Authors contribution to both strengthening a realistic economic theory and
integrating the practical ECG model into theoretical discussions is a systematical comparison of Neoclassical Economics and the (interdisciplinary) theoretical foundations of the Economy for the Common Good approach.
Thanks to this first article, the cornerstone of a theoretical basement of the ECG model, an “Economics for the Common Good”, is laid, translating some of its basic assumptions into existing scientific concepts and language ready for perception and discussion. On this very foundation, the ECG model can be systematically compared to neoclassical economics and other theoretical schools and is now ready for scientific discourse and further development."

In general article is well balanced and thought out.

My only core objection is to diversify and increase heterogeneity of its evidence base cited far outside OECD academic sector.

Much more high-impact, well cited papers outsourcing from LMICs and Emerging Economies must be cited in order to support some claims in the text and give it additional weight.

For this purpose I warmly recommend inclusion of several sources listed beneath alongside with few others at authors own disposal:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13696998.2019.1600523

Daly, H. E., Cobb Jr, J. B., & Cobb, J. B. (1994). For the common good: Redirecting the economy toward community, the environment, and a sustainable future (No. 73). Beacon Press. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2016.00002/full https://www.pdcnet.org/enviroethics/content/enviroethics_1994_0016_0002_0161_0171 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3111/13696998.2015.1093493 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/puar.12191 https://content.sciendo.com/view/journals/sjecr/15/3/article-p139.xml https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S105353579790010X https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphar.2016.00021/full www.paecon.net/PAEReview/wholeissues/issue38.pdf https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/17/3043 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0002764211407903 https://resource-allocation.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12962-020-00210-2 https://academic.oup.com/cje/article-abstract/37/5/947/1683788 https://www.jstor.org/stable/23723790?seq=1 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13696998.2020.1801454 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6835015/ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S105353570500137X https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2016.00115/full https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0304380087900433 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/hec.3406 http://panoeconomicus.org/index.php/jorunal/article/view/298 https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/catoj9&div=45&id=&page= https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10198-012-0439-y.pdf

Conditional to strengthening of citations track record I assume full maturity of this paper for publishing.

 

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

thank you for your appreciative feedback.

We realised the following improvements:

1. We included a section of literature review of anthologies and single contributions that represent a broad and manifold critique of neoclassical economics and heterodox theories (see yellow marked sentences in the revised version).
2. We included some of the proposed literature (e.g. Arnsberger/Varoufakis, see endnotes 7,8, 50, 52, 82,83, 91 in the revised version).
3. We included some non-OECD perspectives (e.g. Amartya Sen).
4. We contextualised the term "Common Good Economics" (new term for our theory) with more citations.

For your info, and to make transparent other improvements due to other reviewers, I attach the current version.

Thanks again,

Christian Felber (on behalf of the authors)

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The article aims to make an original attempt of “contrasting the theoretical basis of the ECG model 20 with neoclassical economics”. “Economics for the Common Good” is proposed as “the cornerstone of a theoretical fundament of the ECG model” as a pilot study. The study aims to identify alterative concept that could address the social challenges, instead of neoclassical interpretation of economics.

I would like to make the following general comments:

1. Research aims and research originality.

Please do articulate them clearly in the introduction.

 

2. Methodology

The authors may want to mention that they are also conducting doctoral/theoretical/comparative research to support their arguments. In addition to “introductory textbooks of economics to grasp the “paradigm””, should they also review the existing literature in journal articles/monographs?

Rather than providing a list of methods, the authors need to organise these methods and try to offer a concrete research framework. A diagraph might be helpful.

 

3. I think the paper may be improved by offering more contextualisation in Section 4.
4. Typos and styling:

 

I think the paper as a whole, especially section 3 and 4, could do with a bit of tidying up and redrafting. There are some typos and (line 532 do you mean 21^st century?). Some tightening up would be good.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

thank you for your comprehensive feedback.

We realised the following improvements:

1. Research aims and research originality

Please do articulate them clearly in the introduction.

• We defined three research aims, including originality, in the last para of section 1.
• In section 4 (Discussion), we further differentiated our approach from previous works with a similar name.
• We connected the final section to the more precisely defined research aims (see 2 yellow segments in the attached text).

2. Methodology

The authors may want to mention that they are also conducting doctoral/theoretical/comparative research to support their arguments.

• Thanks for the hint. We explicitly named the theoretical research with a comparative analysis. See chapter 2, the second sentence.

In addition to “introductory textbooks of economics to grasp the “paradigm””, should they also review the existing literature in journal articles/monographs?

• We agree, that this could be an even better base to grasp the paradigm. However, an representative overview of journal articles was unfortunately out of scope this time. So we focused on introductory textbooks as a compact representation of the paradigm being spread by teaching economics to millions of future economists and graduates from neighbouring disciplines.

Rather than providing a list of methods, the authors need to organise these methods and try to offer a concrete research framework. A diagraph might be helpful.

• We drew a diagram organising our steps, sources and methods visually. See Figure 1, p. 4.
• Additionally, we already depicted the categories of our comparative matrix in a table instead of naming the categories as a list in the text. See Table 1, p. 3.
• In this context we made some changes within the text:
  • The sources are listed in letters (a,b,c) instead of numbers (1,2,3). See Chapter 2, paragraph 2-4.
  • We changed the chronology of the sources: ECG model now c) instead of b) (2). See Chapter 2, paragraph 4.
  • We more explicitly named a step 3 and 4. See Chapter 2, both paragraphs after table 1.

3. I think the paper may be improved by offering more contextualisation in Section 4.

We agree:

• We included a section of literature review of anthologies and single contributions that represent a broad and manifold critique of neoclassical economics and heterodox theories (see yellow marked sentences in the revised version.
• We included some of the proposed literature (e.g. Arnsberger/ Varoufakis).
• We included some non-OECD perspectives (e.g. Amarya Sen)
• We contextualised precisely the term "Common Good Economics" - we changed this term after consulting several natives in the whole article.
  

4. Typos and styling:

I think the paper as a whole, especially section 3 and 4, could do with a bit of tidying up and redrafting. There are some typos and (line 532 do you mean 21^st century?). Some tightening up would be good.

• We tidied up this many more typos and made an extra run through text, Tables and footnotes.

For your info, and to make transparent other improvements due to other reviewers, I attach the current version, with all major changes (except typos) marked in yellow.

Thanks again,

Christian Felber (on behalf of the authors)

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Although the paper addresses an interesting theoretical topic, from my point of view this type of paper is not very appropriate for this Journal.

The article is in its large part descriptive, it lacks the empirical part, although the theoretical part is very well argued and motivated. I regret to mention the fact that it does not fit into the specifics of the Journal.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

thank you for your feedback. We followed the Call for Papers of the Guest Editor:

https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability/special_issues/Sustainable_Economy_Common_Good

which says literally: "...Papers selected for this issue may also address theoretical and methodological developments..."

So we think that our contribution does fit in the scope of this Special Issue.

Best wishes,

Christian Felber (on behalf of the authors)

 

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The reviewer is happy with the changes and suggests accept in the current form.

Reviewer 3 Report

I would like to thank you to authors for the improvements made within the manuscript.