Influence of Financial Shared Services on the Corporate Debt Cost under Digitalization

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This study empirically examines the impact of financial sharing on the corporate 77 debt cost in the digital context, collecting data from A-share listed companies on 78 Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges between 2009 and 2018, based on the 79 perspectives of stakeholders such as creditors, shareholders and society. The research question is timely and relevant. While this is a well written paper, I have some comments and hope that the authors are able to address them.

1. The introduction is wordy and descriptive (especially the first two paragraphs). It has come a long way to know what the research question is. I suggest you better highlight what your research question is and explain why it is important to address it.

2. H1a and H2b should be H1a and H1b. Your arguments are at times random and less focused. I suggest you sharpen your argumentation and identify several clear mechanisms through which X influences Y.

3. For H2, I suggest you focus on how corporate digitalization weakens or reinforces the mechanisms you have identified for H1.

4.  It is unclear why you use the Chinese data to test your hypotheses. The sample description is largely missing.

Given that your moderation analysis is for H2, this section should appear before the section on robustness check.

5. For robustness checks and further analyses, I suggest you explain why do each of them, given the baseline results.

Overall, this is a potentially good study.

Good luck with this project!  

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors require extensive revision through modifications 

1. Abstract is missing from implication of the study which must be included properly

2. Why, the authors have endorsed the data from 2009 to 2018, any logical reasoning behind this. Whether the availability of data is impossible for the years 2019.,2020 and 2021. I suggest to add these years in the sample size

3. Hypotheses should be improved properly. The hypothesis H1a, H2b (which must be H1b) are the same almost as it is a asymmetrical impact. There are actually only two hypotheses. Hence, one hypothesis should be added to analyze the moderating role of corporate risk, idiyosyncratic risk or etc

4. Remove the typos and grammatical errors.

5. Add some  fresh references from this Journal

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The author(s) have improved the manuscript according to the given recommendations.