Examining the Correlation among Economic Development, Foreign Direct Investment, and CO2 Emissions by Utilizing the VECM Model—Empirical Study in Vietnam
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The abstract is too short, it should contain more information about data, period of the study, methodology and main conclusions.
Figure 1 must mention the country
The literature review begins by stating that numerous studies have studied the relationship between CO2 emissions and GDP, however, the section is very short and, in my opinion, very incipient. The authors should reformulate the literature review section by including much more current references and support the sections’ findings with a summary table of the studies, periods, countries, and conclusions about the relationship between GDP and CO2 emissions to position the present study for Vietnam vis-à-vis the state-of-the-art literature. Other studies for Vietnam, if any, should be included in the summary table.
Methods. The study should formulate hypotheses in the methodology section, and discuss whether they are validated.
Instead of national level data, the study should be carried out by manufacturing industries, clustered by levels of co2 emissions.
The authors study the relationship between the GDP and FDI, but the discussion on potential bi-directional causality is absent.
Also, the study should include different proxies for FDI and discuss the robustness of results.
Limitations of the study and future work are missing.
Conclusions- This section states that FDI might be responsible for Co2 emissions. The authors should rephrase the sentence and clarify in what sectors it might occur.
Author Response
Dear Sir/Madam,
Firstly, let me thank you for your comments on our article. We found these comments really helpful and helped us to make the article better and more complete.
We enclose herein an explanation of our corrections.
Best Regards,
Trang Tran
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper elaborates on an interesting and, as it seems from the literature review, quite unexplored topic of environmental impact of FDI inflows and economic growth in Vietnam. The logic of the paper is sound and corresponds to the industry standard but there are several flaws which the author(s) need(s) to address.
First of all, a brief description of Vietnam’s economic development and FDI structure would make a nice background to the research. What industries do the FDI go into? What is their ecological imprint on a global scale? Secondary, I recommend the author to think more about the interpretation of the paper’s findings and the underlying causes of the variables’ (non-)relationship and reflect it in the text. Analyzing three very general variables can only lead to basic conclusions but deductive thinking may help “expand” the results via explaining their “intricacies”.
The descriptive statistics on the data as well as detailed description of each variable are missing. Are CO2 emissions “pure” or do they include the CO2 equivalent of non-CO2 emissions? Is FDI net or inbound and why is it in % of GDP (is this standard approach as compared to literature?)?
Furthermore, there are mistakes in econometrics. The ADF test has H0: unit root and in Table 1 one sees the p-value to be lower than 0.05 which speaks against H0. Yet the author(s) claim(s) that the unit root is present. First differences are also mentioned but never applied in calculations (I never saw the d symbol in any variable). Are the variables really 1st differences? The same problem is observed in the cointegration relationships tests. The tests show zero relationships but the author(s) claim(s) them to be 2. Provided I’m reading the table right (if not, I apologize). Finally, based on what information criteria were the lags selected? AIC, BIC? Please re-check the above stated and eventually re-estimate the model.
Finally, the discussion section is too short. There should be a thorough comparison between the paper’s findings and previous research on the topic to stress the value added.
PS Grammar in the text, especially in the abstract and in a few other paragraphs, needs revising.
Author Response
Dear Sir/Madam
First, thank you very much for your comments on our article. We find that your suggestions are efficient and valid. We have made an edit to our paper to make it more academic. Please read more about our response in the attachment.
Once again, thank you very much for your comments
Best regards,
Trang Tran
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear authors,
The paper has improved. Congrats.
Author Response
Dear Sir/Madam
Thank you very much for your response!
Best regards,
Trang Tran
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear authors,
Please expand the section dedicated to the discussion of results as I indicated in my review: compare your findings with the abundant sources you examined in the literature review. A couple of paragraphs would suffice.
Everything else is fine now.
Good luck!
Author Response
Dear Sir/Madam
Thanks very much for your respond to my paper.
I have already added some other results to compare with my result in the Discussion.
Best regards
Trang Tran
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
