“Digitalisation” and “Greening” as Components of Technology Upgrading and Sustainable Economic Performance^†

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

According to the authors, this paper explores the pace and direction of technological development by using technology upgrade conceptual and measurement framework.

Abstract – the methodology used should be explicitly mentioned in the abstract.

Abstract – there are several acronyms and abreviations that appear in the abstract and are not described the first time they appear. Please check the entire document and provide a list of acronyms/abreviations after the abstract to improve the clarity of the paper.

Overall, the Introduction is poorly articulated. Please consider the motivation of your study, identify what has been previously scientifically done on the subject (with the citation of several updated research works). Then, clearly identify the gaps found in the literature that you have cited. Subsequently, contextualize the need of using your methodology for overcoming these gaps. Identify the novelties introduced by its use. Then go through the Research Questions that you want to address with your work (without answering to them). Finally, provide a guided tour of the article.

The authors should mention the protocol used to conduct the literature review. There is software that allows conducting comprehensive protocols and can also help highlighting the research gaps in the literature. Just stating what each author has done without any articulation is not the ideal way. In order to better systematize the literature review, there should be Tables with different fields summarizing the main information available on these studies, also highlighting the type of methodologies used to better justify the authors’ methodology choice and how it brings novelties into the analysis. Then, just a brief discussion of the main topics addressed in the literature should be considered highlighting the main gaps and how this work fills in these gaps. Finally, no literature review has been found regarding the methodology used by the authors in similar contexts.~

An additional column should be considered in the table where all the variables are defined with the citation used to base their choice.

The results should be contrasted with the literature.

Author Response

Please look at the detailed replies in the attached file

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper investigates whether 'digitalisation' and '‘greening’' drive technology upgrading and sustainable economic performance. The paper is well written, however, I have reservations about the methodology and results.

Comments:

1.     The research question requires a causal analysis, however, the methods presented are purely correlational. This is highlighted in footnote 8, however, the lack of causal analysis means that the research question is not fully answered, and the paper is incomplete.

2.     Relating to point 1, there is a long literature in economics that has investigated the role of TFP and its subcomponents on economic growth. Perhaps the authors should appeal to some of these studies to get a causal interpretation. An alternative is to change the scope of the paper (including the title) to make it purely correlational-based.

3.     The aggregation (A+B) on line 135 is a bit odd. I would have thought that the relationship is multiplicative. The authors may disagree with this, however, a justification should be added to the paper.

4.     Table 1 is very large. What exactly is new here? It’s important to highlight each contribution for the readers.

5.     Table 1 suggests that a simple weighted average is used to create the indexes. This raises numerous questions. E.g., Have all of the series been transformed to the same scale? Where do the weights come from? Why not use a statistical method, e.g., principle components analysis?

6.     In Section 4, a scatter plot is a strange way to represent a dynamic relationship. Why not use a time series plot?

7.     In Section 5.2., how is TFP measured? Have the authors considered reverse causality? I.e., TFP will depend on technology upgrading…similarly, GDP growth and technology upgrading are endogenous …

8.     Many of the terms used in the paper, e.g., “digitalization”, “greening” and “technology upgrading” are very vague and used in multiple contexts throughout the paper. They should be defined more precisely so that readers know exactly what they refer to and how they are measured.

9.     Many acronyms are left undefined. This should be fixed.

Author Response

Please look at the detailed replies in the attached file

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Author(s),

Please find below my concerns and recommendations regarding your manuscript proposal entitled "Are 'Digitalisation' and '‘Greening’' driving technology upgrading and sustainable economic performance?" sent to Sustainability Journal.

1. The Introduction section is pretty-well written, but you need to clearly define and describe the following important aspects:

- the research gap;

- the research question(s);

- the research goal.

2. At page 2, rows 93-95, you say: "By considering digitalisation and greening, we can understand how the direc-93 tionality of technology upgrading interacts with other components in driving TFP and labour productivity as technology aggregates."

Please define the acronym "TFP" at the first use, so that the readers understand its meaning.

3. After the Introduction, you should have a distinct section where you define and describe the reseach hypotheses.

At this moment, there is no research hypothesis in your manuscript proposal. A modern research article should have at least one research hypothesis that should be tested in a scientific manner.

4. At row 252 you have 2 dots at the end of the sentence. Please revise this editing issue.

5. At rows 304-307 you say:

"Figure 7 shows that there is no clear relationship between changes in the index of technology upgrading (ITU A-B) and changes in labour productivity (measured as value-added per hours worked)."

How did you set the "relationship". Did you compute a correlation coefficient? Or did you use any other indicator?

Please be specific, so that the readers understand your approach.

6. Under table 2, you say that the regression is based on different sources. But in the table I don't see values.

Please present the numerical values of the regression coefficients and their p-values.

7. The references used in your manuscript are pretty old and deprecated. I recommend you to include the following valuable resources in your article: https://doi.org/10.1002/sd.2368, https://doi.org/10.3390/admsci10040096, https://doi.org/10.47836/pjssh.30.1.14, http://www.transformations.knf.vu.lt/47a/article/amod, https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2019.3538, https://doi.org/10.1108/IJOA-11-2019-1941.

By including these resources, you will better describe the context of your research.

8. In the Conclusions section, please include many future research directions based on your research results.

Dear Author(s),

Please consider all the above remarks as being constructive recommendations in order to improve the general quality of your manuscript proposal.

Kind Regards!

Author Response

Please look at the detailed replies in the attached file

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors addressed my concerns. The paper can be published.

Author Response

file with reply attached

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Author(s),

I have read the revised version of your manuscript and now I have only one minor recommendation: in the Conclusions chapter, please add a distinct paragraph where you describe the future research directions.

Kind Regards!

Author Response

We thank the reviewer for allowing us to strengthen the conclusions. Therefore, we have restructured the last part of the conclusions by including two distinct paragraphs indicating future research directions on the data and the conceptual analysis. They read:

“As would be expected, the paper highlights some limitations. First, choosing appropriate indicators is inevitably complex; future work might improve on the 49 sub-components choice. The analysis would benefit from longer time series (including the potential consequences of COVID-19 in 2020-2021 and the more recent military conflict in Ukraine and ensuing waves across markets worldwide) and a larger sample of economies.

Our research shows the need to devote more research to various measures of productivity and explore the extent to which they capture different measures of technology accumulation. Productivity indicators as aggregate efficiency outcomes contain other non-technological or institutional processes. They reflect the coevolution of technology accumulation and various non-technological factors in increasing complexity as we move from productivity per hour, per employed and per population. This issue has not been systematically addressed, yet it seems essential in understanding the coevolutionary nature of technology upgrading and sustainable economic performance.”

We have also run a final spell and grammar check.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf