Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

1. The literature review should be presented in a more concise and logical form.

2. Some tables need to be beautified, e.g. Table 2

3. why some figures are in red, please focus on explaining it

4. the contribution of the paper should be further explained.

Author Response

Reviewer 1

1. The literature review should be presented in a more concise and logical form.

R: Thank you very much for your valuable suggestion. We have entirely changed the literature review.

2. Some tables need to be beautified, e.g. Table 2

R: Thank you very much for your valuable suggestion. We have improved the Tables.

3. why some figures are in red, please focus on explaining it

R: Thank you very much for your valuable suggestion. We have explained this issue in the text.

4. the contribution of the paper should be further explained.

R: We explain our main contributions in the Introduction, in the Conclusions and in the literature review:

“In this line of work, none of the studies published so far that employ DEA in the assessment of the OPs considers the MS’s overall performance in the application of the ERDF. In addition, the VBDEA has not hitherto been used in this context (see also Section 2). One of the great benefits of the VBDA over conventional DEA approaches is that it allows understanding of the main reasons behind (in)efficiency. Also, this approach enables easy handling of negative or null data, permits performing robustness assessment and facilitates the explicit incorporation of the Decision-Makers (DM)’s preferences into the evaluation process, either using value functions or by employing weight constraints on the analysis. Hence, the novelties of our work are four-fold: 1) unlike the previous literature devoted to this topic, rather than evaluating the efficiency of ERDF at the OP level we do it at the MS level; 2) unlike the traditional DEA models usually available in the literature, this paper employs the VBDEA approach in the efficiency assessment of the ERDF implementation dedicated to TO 4 in 23 EU beneficiary countries; 3) it incorporates the political preferences of hypothetical DM through the introduction of weight constraints in the analysis; 4) it performs the robustness assessment of the results obtained, thus providing an additional understanding on how efficiency might change with the variation of the indicators used in the analysis.”

 

“Despite the prolific application of DEA in LCE studies (see Table 1), no explicit mention has been found regarding the use of the VBDEA method in LCE studies nor the evaluation of the implementation of the ERDF under the LCE theme in Europe. Therefore, our study is particularly timely and relevant since the transition to an LCE is one of the major concerns of the EU political agenda (Chenet et al., 2021). Moreover, to the best of our knowledge, none of the papers reviewed so far  (see Table 1) considered the possibility of incorporating the DM’s preferences in efficiency assessment. Insofar, this will be the main novelty introduced herein, i.e., through the application of the VBDEA method, it is possible to consider constraints on the weights that can help reflect different political concerns of the DM, thus allowing to explore distinct scenarios consistent with their preferences.”

 

“The main objective of this paper was to evaluate the efficiency of the implementation of the ERDF devoted to the support of an LCE in 23 EU MS. We suggest a three-stage VBDEA modelling approach to achieve this goal. In the first stage, the VBDEA model is utilized to calculate the efficiency ratings of each country. In the second stage, data on the adjustments that should be made to reduce any disparities between inefficient OPs and their efficient peers is acquired. Finally, in the third stage, this methodology encompasses the preferences of a hypothetical DM through the introduction of constraints on the ranking order of the weights.

Unlike other alternative methods applied in comparable situations, the VBDEA model is particularly important for MA, as it enables, at a single stage ranking all the OPs (either efficient or inefficient) under evaluation, helping in the identification of the reasons behind their (in)efficiency. Besides allowing to include the preference of the DMs, this model also enables tackling the null and negative data easily, because it relies on the use of value functions to translate de DMs’ preferences.”

 

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear author,

I've read your article carefully because it touches on a very important issue, which is the transition to an emissions economy in the EU. Undoubtedly, EU funds are an extremely important element on which the success of this transformation depends.

After reading I have some suggestions, comments, and advice that will help to improve the scientific level of the paper.

·  Incorrectly compiled bibliography, see Census Standards in Sustainability.

· In the conclusions, on page 17, there is a false sentence regarding energy dependence on Russia, f. ex. Poland. For several months, Poland has stopped importing any energy products from Russia.

·  No line numbering from page 8.

   Increase the number of citations to over 40 publications.

In summary, the manuscript requires a slight revision, after which it will be ready for publication in Sustainability.

Author Response

Reviewer 2

Dear author,

I've read your article carefully because it touches on a very important issue, which is the transition to an emissions economy in the EU. Undoubtedly, EU funds are an extremely important element on which the success of this transformation depends.

After reading I have some suggestions, comments, and advice that will help to improve the scientific level of the paper.

• Incorrectly compiled bibliography, see Census Standards in Sustainability.

R: Thank you very much for your valuable suggestion. We have entirely changed the literature review.

• In the conclusions, on page 17, there is a false sentence regarding energy dependence on Russia, f. ex. Poland. For several months, Poland has stopped importing any energy products from Russia.

R: Thank you very much for your valuable observation. I am not saying that now Poland is dependent on Russia, but it was. The time horizon of the data used in this paper is between 2014 and 2020. We have changed the sentence to the past:

“Note also that these countries were very exposed to energy supply disturbances, were extremely reliant on oil, regularly depended on Russia as a single supplier and are situated on the periphery of the EU.”

• No line numbering from page 8.

R: Thank you very much for your highlighting this issue. We cannot control this issue.

   Increase the number of citations to over 40 publications.

R: Thank you very much for your valuable suggestion. We have proceeded accordingly.

In summary, the manuscript requires a slight revision, after which it will be ready for publication in Sustainability