Study on the Influence Mechanism and Adjustment Path of Climate Risk on China’s High-Quality Economic Development

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Please see the attactment. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you very much for your valuable advice. We have put the modification in Word.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Based on the panel data of 31 provinces in China from 2009 to 2021, combined with the moderated mediation effect model, this study empirically analyzes the impact mechanism and adjustment path of climate risk on the high-quality development of China's economy. The article has practical significance. Suggestions are as follows:

1. Keywords: ‘There is a moderating mediating effect’ is suggested to change to ‘moderating effect’.

2. There are language errors in the article, and it is recommended to make careful revisions.

3. The introduction does not elaborate the problem deeply enough and needs to be further strengthened.

4. The citation format of literature is not standardized.

5. Marketization level and environmental regulation are considered important factors affecting high-quality economic development. It is recommended that the authors refer to Song et al. (2022) and Zhang et al. (2022) to exclude the impact of marketization level and environmental regulation in the regression model.

6. It is suggested that the authors further point out the shortcomings of this study.

Reference：

Song, Y., Zhang, Y., Zhang, Y., 2022. Economic and environmental influences of resource tax: Firm-level evidence from China. Resources Policy, 77, 102751.

Zhang, Y., Song, Y.,  Zou, H., 2022. Non-linear effects of heterogeneous environmental regulations on industrial relocation: Do compliance costs work?. Journal of Environmental Management, 323, 116188.

Must be improved.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your valuable advice. We have put the modification in Word.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper entitled “Study on the Influence Mechanism and Adjustment Path of Climate Risk on China's High-quality Economic Development” aims at analyzing of the impact mechanism and adjustment path of climate risk on the high-quality development of China’s economy.

To do so, the authors have used a panel data of 31 provinces in China from 2009 to 2021.

The following amendments are required before the paper can be published.

1. Paper’s novelty must be highlighted in Introduction section, below the existing reference to the paper’s contributions. The authors must highlight the rationale (both theoretical and organisational) for their study as well.

2. Sections 3 and 4 must be merged into a new, “Research Methodology” section.

3. All the used variables must be clearly explained and presented. For example, the authors state that they have used “innovative development” as threshold variable. However, it is not clarified how the variables is measured and which kind values it takes.

4. Paper’s conclusions are too short. The authors must critically evaluate their results and compare them with relevant cases reported in the literature. To do, the following papers can be used:

a. Soava, G., Mehedintu, A., Sterpu, M., & Raduteanu, M. (2018). Impact of renewable energy consumption on economic growth: Evidence from European Union countries. Technological and Economic Development of Economy, 24(3), 914-932.

b. Ntanos, S., Skordoulis, M., Kyriakopoulos, G., Arabatzis, G., Chalikias, M., Galatsidas, S., Batzios, A. & Katsarou, A. (2018). Renewable energy and economic growth: Evidence from European countries. Sustainability, 10(8), 2626.

c. Kose, N., Bekun, F. V., & Alola, A. A. (2020). Criticality of sustainable research and development-led growth in EU: the role of renewable and non-renewable energy. Environmental Science and Pollution Research, 27, 12683-12691.

d. Simionescu, M., Păuna, C. B., & Diaconescu, T. (2020). Renewable energy and economic performance in the context of the European Green Deal. Energies, 13(23), 6440.

e. Bilan, Y., Streimikiene, D., Vasylieva, T., Lyulyov, O., Pimonenko, T., & Pavlyk, A. (2019). Linking between renewable energy, CO2 emissions, and economic growth: Challenges for candidates and potential candidates for the EU membership. Sustainability, 11(6), 1528.

5. Moreover, the authors must provide managerial and social/ policy implications based on their results in conclusions section, in a clearer way than the way they did it. For example, they state “We should strengthen publicity and education, strengthen people's awareness of protecting "clean waters and green mountains", and develop green innovation to promote high-quality economic development in a coordinated manner”. How could this be achieved? Which kind of policies should be implemented?

6. Last, the papers limitations and caveats must be referred.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your valuable advice. We have put the modification in Word.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have carefully revised the comments. But, they did not solve the endogenous problem between climate risk and high-quality development as suggested in point 7. The statisitical method authors used is not the formal and useful method to test and solve the endogenous problem.

None.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your valuable advice. The modification of endogeneity in the previous version is really not in place, so for the endogeneity problem, we have added a small point "4.1.3 Endogeneity test" in the paper and marked it with blue font to explain the problem. The specific content is as follows: "This paper tries to avoid model endogeneity problems caused by missing important variables by adding several variables that have a significant impact on high-quality economic development. The following two aspects are mainly taken into consideration: first, regions with high economic quality development index (such as Beijing, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Guangdong, etc.) have large pollution emissions, which leads to frequent extreme climate in these regions. In other words, there is a reverse causal relationship between high-quality economic development and climate risk. Second, last year's high quality development index will continue to stimulate this year's innovative, coordinated, green, open and shared development. That is to say, the current period of high-quality economic development may be influenced by the previous period of high-quality economic development.
To this end, we use the instrumental variable method to solve the first endogeneity problem caused by reverse causality. The lag period of climate risk is taken as the instrumental variable to conduct 2SLS regression. The specific results are shown in column (2) of Table 2. At the same time, we take the lag period of high-quality economic development as the instrumental variable, apply the system GMM model combined with formula (1) for regression to solve the second endogenous problem, and the results are shown in column (3) of Table 2. It can be seen that the Sargan test P values of both columns are greater than 0.1, that is, all instrumental variables are valid, and the regression results show that climate risk significantly inhibits the high-quality development of China's economy."

Reviewer 2 Report

accepted.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your valuable comments, and we will continue to polish the article.

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have adequately addressed all the issues raised by the reviewers. Thus, the paper can be published in present form.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your valuable comments, and we will continue to polish the article.

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

I think the authors have carfully replied the comments.

None.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your valuable advice. We have put the result of this modification in the following document.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf