Sustainable Development Indicators and Their Relationship to GDP: Evidence from Emerging Economies
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The article has some inconsistency in the data and methodology applied. Even though, brings a new view on SDGs.
Row 10: The abstract must include information about the data used for the analysis and the implied method.
Row 207: The variables used must be organized into a table with three columns: one for the SDG domain, one for the name of the variables, and the other for the definition.
Row 193:The introduction section must include the structure of the paper.
Also, it is not very clear why you used these variables for the analysis. Please, consider explaining through literature why these variables are important and what are other authors' results. You should consider including migration, which is an important factor that influences the GDP, and one of the SDGs concerning. Also, other variables to consider: life expectancy, severe material deprivation rate, unemployment. Though unemployment was mentioned in the Data section it does not appear in the results section. Please, explain why it was removed or introduce it into the model.
Test between random and fixed effect. Test for serial correlation and heteroscedasticity.
Explain the reason for using SUR panel data due to the fact that your panel is balanced and SUR is usually for unbalanced panel data.
The methodology section is scarce. There are insufficient details given to replicate the proposed experimental procedures and analysis. The data source of the variables does not appear. There is no explanation for why you consider those models for the analysis and the authors that applied something related. What statistical software was used for the estimations?
Please read and cite newer articles as Prada, Elena-Maria. "The Relationship Between Sustainable Development Goals and Migration. An EU-28 Perspective" Journal of Social and Economic Statistics, vol.9, no.1, 2020, pp.28-45. https://doi.org/10.2478/jses-2020-0004. This article also offers a clear understanding of the most common panel data regressions.
Author Response
We thank the reviewer for the positive and constructive recommendation. Please see our detailed responses to each comment. Thank you.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear Editorial Board, Dear Authors,
The paper entitled “Sustainable Development Indicators and their Relationship to GDP: Evidence from Emerging Economies” aims to analyze the metrics the United Nations has set and called the Sustainable Development Goals and their association with the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in emerging economies.
I find it useful and important that the authors take up this research topic because the introduction of sustainable development and green economy principles are very important in terms of reducing CO2.
After reading the paper, I have comments and suggestions to improve the paper as follows:
Introduction and Literature Review
The content in these chapters should be organized. The purpose of the paper is not emphasized enough. There is a lack of precise research questions. What is the purpose of this research?
It would be appropriate to deepen the discussed research issue based on international literature, especially since the article does not have a separate chapter on Theoretical Background.
In Materials and Methods
This chapter contains many technical errors consistent with the journal's guidelines. Please correct the notation from [201-220; 229-236]. Please eliminate the extra numbering.
The authors did not explain why these 5 countries were chosen for the study.
In Empirical Findings
The results of the study are presented very accurately. Interesting figures are worth mentioning, but the table captions should be more precise.
The results of the study are presented in relation to all 5 countries together.
There is a lack of detailed information in relation to the individual country analysed.
In Summary and Conclusions
In the Discussion Section, the authors should discuss and explain the findings and results of the paper more. The information contained in the Discussion refer mainly to the information of the studied area. There is a lack of reference to the conclusions of other authors on similar topics.
It is also important to describe the results of the paper in greater detail in this section. This would contribute to a high improvement of this paper. The authors should compare their project and results with results from similar conducted research on this topic from other parts of the world.
In the paper, there were many technical errors that need to be removed:
- the literature notation in the text should be corrected according to the guidelines
- remove footnotes
- wrong literature transcript
Kind regards,
Author Response
We appreciate the constructive recommendations. Please see our detailed responses. Thank you.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The paper aims to analyze the metrics the United Nations has set and called the Sustainable Development Goals according to GDP.
At the end of the research, the authors reached the given conclusions.
The research are is very actual. The area of sustainable development is very specific, and today, it is very important problem today for the most countries of the world. The whole article is interestingly processed. I highly appreciate the structure of the article. It is clear, the individual parts follow each other.
The methodology is clearly stated. This paper investigates the metrics the United Nations has set and called the Sustainable Development Goals and their association with the GDP in a sample of five emerging economics. The analysed period was 2000 - 2019. The set methods take into account the researched issues. The authors choose the methods very appropriately. This fact adds weight to research. Some of analyzed sustainable development indicators were found to have a negative relationship to the GDP growth rate.
This study found that the narrow focus on using GDP as the primary indicator of achievement will ultimately lead nations to achieve unsustainable, short-term prosperity.
The list of resources is appropriate to the research area and contains resources researching the analyzed topic.
- Nevertheless, I suggest that the sources, and of course the theoretical basis of the research, must be supplemented by additional resources. It is a pity, that such a comprehensive topic is based on a limited amount of resources. By supplementing them, the article will increase its level.
- Put into the conclusions some proposals for further research in this field.
Author Response
We appreciate the support and constructive recommendations. Please see our detailed responses. Thank you.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
You have sent this argument strictly to the reviewer. I think you must include it inside the paper, due to the fact that explains you methodology better. Think that your article may be read by authors with no experience on panel data. The software used is really important for someone to understand better your choice (for example R or Stata act different than E-View).
Here is with copy and paste a part from you comments that you should include it into your article at the methodology section:
From Eviews manual:
“While most of our discussion will be in terms of a balanced sample, EViews does not require
that your data be balanced; missing values may be used to represent observations that are not
available for analysis in a given period. We will detail the unbalanced case only where deemed
necessary.
We term this a Cross-section SUR specification since it involves covariances across cross-
sections as in a seemingly unrelated regressions type framework (where each equation
corresponds to a cross-section).
Cross-section SUR generalized least squares on this specification (sometimes referred to as the
Parks estimator) is simply the feasible GLS estimator for systems where the residuals are both
cross-sectionally heteroskedastic and contemporaneously correlated. We employ residuals from
first stage estimates to form an estimate of . In the second stage, we perform feasible GLS.
Bear in mind that there are potential pitfalls associated with the SUR/Parks estimation (see Beck
and Katz (1995)). For one, EViews may be unable to compute estimates for this model when you
the dimension of the relevant covariance matrix is large and there are a small number of
observations available from which to obtain covariance estimates. For example, if we have a
cross-section SUR specification with large numbers of cross-sections and a small number of time
periods, it is quite likely that the estimated residual correlation matrix will be nonsingular so that
feasible GLS is not possible.
It is worth noting that an attract ...
Author Response
Thank you for the constructive recommendations on the first version of the manuscript. As requested, we have added the suggested paragraph in the methodology section of the paper. We hope that this version of the manuscript meets your approval. Thank you for your comments, which we believe have improved the quality of the paper.
Reviewer 2 Report
I have no comments.
I strongly recommend this paper for publication in the Journal "Sustainability
Author Response
Thank you for the support. We thank the reviewer again for the constructive recommendations on the first round of the review process.
