The Importance of Global Value Chains in Developing Countries’ Agricultural Trade Development

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The beginning of the article is very encouraging because it shows the interesting topic of the global value-added chain. However, the conclusions at the end of this article do not indicate any previously unknown conclusions. The given conclusions are general that each economist can draw for himself only based on observation of the international market.

Furthermore, I must point out a few remarks of less substantive value, which - I regret to admit - reduce the value of the reviewed article. They are primarily of a technical nature.

1. In verses 37 - 38 there is a repetition of the same sentence for no reason.
2. The authors use the acronym LDC (verse 44) without explaining it, so the reader must find out for himself what this acronym refers to.
3. The authors formulate a conclusion: “The development gap in the industrial and service sectors means that the only sector that can successfully compete with exports” – without showing the process of reaching that conclusion. This is rather the thesis they assume for the proposed research.
4. What does it mean: 'Research manuscripts'? Not clear.
5. The comment in lines 190-194 should be moved to the footnotes.
6. The reader is confused about what years have been analyzed: 1995 – 2018 or 1995 – 2020. Probably to 2020, although there are also data to 2018. It might be because of the shortcut used in the paper.
7. The term ‘developing countries' is not explained. For a better understanding of the countries concerned, it should be clearly defined.
8. The authors write about the literature review, although they do not write about the issue constituting the review. Was it the agriculture sector or the developing countries or other topics?
9. The methods and data analysis is not clear.
10. The authors provide data of shares of developing countries in world food exports in the years 1995-2020, but why are there no European countries in some tables? To my knowledge, the share of Europe in world food exports is 23%. It might have happened because the authors had assumed that in Europe there are no developing countries. But if yes, it is not clear and should be explicated in the text. The data reported in the different tables are not compatible. This makes the arguments unclear.
11. The authors write the aim of the paper: “The main objective of the paper is to assess the role of global value chains in creating the export potential of developing countries”. Unfortunately, there are no such conclusions. There are only general conclusions. In addition, such an objective does not go along with the title of the paper.
12. The goal is very general and there are no specific research questions or hypotheses that define the research methodology.

Concluding I believe that both the research process and the content of the article should be rethought and rewritten.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors tackle the issue of global value chains in relation to agricultural trade development, aiming to assess their role in creating export potential for developing countries. Overall, it is a good paper, addressing an interesting topic, with potential useful findings, but further improvement is needed.

Please find below my suggestions.

• Introduction is rather weak and devoid of references. You should explain more clearly why is the topic important and what is the original contribution brought about by your research.
• There is no sufficient information regarding the choice of the 28 developing countries as a case study for this topic.  Availability of statistical data shouldn’t be the only rationale for scientific research.
• Research gaps in the literature and research questions and/or hypothesis are missing.
• The methodology is rather basic, the authors present mostly descriptive statistics and the discussion section provides limited new contributions to the existing literature.
• Lines 347-350 “Authors should discuss the results and how they can be interpreted from the perspective of previous studies and of the working hypotheses. The findings and their implications should be discussed in the broadest context possible. Future research directionsmay also be highlighted.” seem out of context.

• The conclusions should include a discussion on limitations and future research directions
• specific policy recommendations are missing

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The reviewed paper is not a research article, more like a review or commentary.

The review work is a simple descriptive analysis of secondary data considering two groups of agricultural products. The Authors compare the results for those two groups with the overall data even if the analysed data covers different time periods: overall data 1995-2020 and particular data.

The introduction provides only the most basic information: a bit of background and the goal. There is no information about the expected paper’s contribution. The description of the structure of the paper in Section 1: Introduction, i.e. stating what each of the sections deals with, which would help with quicker navigation through the paper for the interested readers is missing. Lines 36-37 and 38 are the same.

The numbering of the sections is inappropriate: Section 2 appears twice in the text: lines 61 and 106.

Section: The theoretical concept of the global value chain should be incorporated into literature review (as a subsection) and referenced appropriately.

Section 3 provides an explanation of how the value added is calculated and what datasets were used, but it does not provide information on how the level of integration of a given country was incorporated into analysis (was it a simple 1;0 variable that given country is a member of trade block or participates in FTA or not?). Missing explanation in Fig. 1: “Foreign value added contained in intermediat”.

There is no clearly identified contribution of this article, no value added either to the works from the field or particular stakeholders. The Authors did not identify a research gap, which this work could fill or stakeholders that may benefit from that work.

The Authors clearly left some fragments from the template, like lines 190-194 and 347-351 describing what should be included in a given section.

There are many inconsistencies in the use of terms, like “Viet Nam” and “Vietnam” (lines: 292, 325 and 306, 337), “%” or “p.c.” (lines: 269 and 271-272).

There are some serious issues with the used language – the sentences are too long. Following the argumentation of the authors is often problematic due to that (e.g. lines: 44-45, 64-66, 88-90-93, 128-131, 145-148, 150-152, 161-163, 182-185). A thorough language check is required.

The Authors did not provide limitations of their work or further research directions in the concussions.

The conclusions are not well aligned with the set goal or the conducted analysis. The connection between the participation in the global value chains and the export potential of the developing countries in relation to their level of integration is not presented. It may result from the lack of incorporation of this aspect in the research methodology.

In its current form, this paper is not of much interest to potential readers.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I would like to thank you for the efforts the authors made to improve and then present their analyzes in a way that allows understanding the purpose and scope of the research.
After the necessary correction, I believe that the article is worth publishing.
I have only one remark of a rather language nature. It seems to me that in the sentence: "The article fills the existing research gap in several aspects:
1) concerns developing countries;
2) is an analysis of trade in agricultural commodities;
3) due to the use of the database from November 2021, the time range also covers the years after 2015."  there are mental shortcuts because I don't clearly understand what constitutes the research gap. That is why I ask the authors to expand this sentence so that the reader clearly understands what research gap the presented analyzes are trying to fill.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The revised version of the manuscript is significantly improved. I have no further suggestions.

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

I am positively impressed by this version of the paper and the changes the Authors were able to make.

The Authors greatly improved their paper by providing better background for their work (broader literature review), further elaborating their results, and providing discussion/comparison with other papers.

Adding hypothesis and highlighting the research gap allows to better grasp the research idea behind the reviewed paper.

One minor thing – adding the description of the papers structure at the end of the Introduction may further improve the reader's experience.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf