Green Taxation, Trade Liberalization and Natural Resource Utilization

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for the opportunity of reading and reviewing your interesting manuscript.

The paper is actually a scientific essay on the very important and relevant topic of green taxes.

The paper categorizes green tax policies into environmental protection, resource occupation, and guiding types, analyzing their impact on natural resource utilization using system GMM and continuous DID methods. It finds that green tax policies generally promote resource use, though past policies lack effectiveness. Resource occupation taxes show no causal link to utilization. All three tax types exhibit spatial spillover effects, varying by region: minimal in the east, negative in the central and northeast, and positive only for guiding taxes in the west. Trade openness mediates the effect solely for guiding taxes.

The paper is well written and well organized. The structure is adequate but I suggest to include a Discussion section. The literature and theoretical foundations are well fitted. Regarding the methodology, you need to clarify the data sources and how you selected them. 

The paper concludes with multi-perspective policy recommendations. However, this final section is too long and parts of it should belong to the Discussion section. In the final section you should limit to conclusions, implications and limitations of the study, or further prospects for reserach.

Overall, I appreciate the paper and wish you all the best!

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, please check the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors. Thank you for the opportunity to read your paper. Overall, the paper is comprehensive, well-written and well-structured, despite still requiring some editing issues (typos, formatting inconsistencies, broken references) that detract from readability. A professional or careful edit is then recommended.

The paper makes a notable contribution by classifying green taxes into three categories (environmental protection, resource occupation, and guiding). This conceptual framework is innovative and clarifies heterogeneous effects often overlooked in prior research. The integration of trade openness as a mediating mechanism is also original and timely, offering a new lens for understanding fiscal-environmental interactions. Despite this, the paper is very China-centric, with limited discussion of international experiences or comparative evidence. I would suggest that you expand the discussion, as far as it is possible, beyond China to strengthen its global relevance. 

The review is extensive and cites a wide range of studies, covering green taxation, trade openness, and natural resource utilisation. It highlights gaps in existing literature, especially regarding the interplay between green tax policy and trade openness. However, at times, the review is overly descriptive, summarizing prior studies without synthesizing them into clear debates. Then, I think readers would benefit from some summarisation or even some figures that could help them to better understand the literature path. Please be aware that the text has some "reference errors", which provide a wrong view of the authors' unprofessionalism, which should be corrected because I am certain that is not the case.

The paper carefully builds its hypotheses on Pigouvian taxation, the Coase theorem, and the Porter hypothesis, providing the analysis with solid theoretical foundations. Besides, the linkage to spatial spillover effects via Marshallian externalities is conceptually interesting. Nonetheless, the framework sometimes seems very dense and somewhat repetitive. Therefore, I would recommend that authors try to express key ideas more concisely. Furthermore, the mechanisms explaining why resource occupation taxes fail to improve resource utilisation need deeper exploration imo.

Then, the use of system GMM, continuous DID, and spatial Durbin models demonstrates that the authors put their best efforts to provide methodological rigour and sophistication, which was also the case of including regional heterogeneity (east, central, west, northeast), adding nuance and policy relevance.

However, I must stress that the empirical strategy may not fully resolve endogeneity issues; policies and resource use can be jointly determined. Moreover, some methodological details (choice of instruments, robustness checks) could be elaborated to increase transparency.

The results are clear: guiding green taxes are most effective, resource occupation taxes are ineffective, and spatial spillover effects are significant. In this context, the finding that indirect spillover effects exceed direct effects is relevant and well-linked to the theory. Notwithstanding, the discussion is sometimes narrowly statistical, without sufficient attention to real-world implementation challenges (e.g., enforcement capacity, regional inequalities). Besides, some results (e.g., negative spillovers in central regions) are reported but not fully explained.

Finally, the paper provides general recommendations, such as tailoring tax policies to regional conditions and emphasising guiding green taxes, even though the recommendations remain broad (e.g., “adapt to local conditions”) and could be made more specific and actionable, e.g., how tax incentives should be structured, or how spillovers can be mitigated.

To summarise, I would say that this is a valuable and ambitious paper that contributes to the study of fiscal instruments for sustainable development. Its originality lies in the classification of green taxes and the integration of trade openness as a mediating factor. However, the paper needs editorial refinement, deeper causal interpretation, and more concrete policy recommendations to fully achieve its potential to the literature.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, please check the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This manuscript studies the relationship between green tax policy in China, trade liberalization, and natural resource utilization. The authors divide green taxation into three categories (environmental, resource occupation, and guidance) and employ advanced econometric models (System GMM, continuous DID, spatial Durbin model, and mediation effects) with provincial data from 2011–2023. They find that: (i) green taxes generally promote resource use efficiency, albeit with lags; (ii) the resource occupation tax shows no significant effects; (iii) there are strong spatial spillover effects, heterogeneous by region; and (iv) trade liberalization mediates the effect of guidance taxes only.

Although the tripartite classification of green taxes is interesting, the theoretical foundation is not entirely clear. It should be explained why these categories are mutually exclusive and exhaustive, and how they are operationalized in official databases.

The use of System GMM is suitable for dynamic panels, but the manuscript does not sufficiently discuss the robustness of the instruments, potential over-identification bias, or the validity of the Hansen/Sargan test. This is critical because the results depend heavily on proper instrumentation.

Treating the 2015 reform as a "natural experiment" is problematic given that there is no clear control group. The continuous DID strategy requires strong assumptions of parallel trends that are neither tested nor graphed. I suggest adding graphical pre-trend tests and placebo tests.

The composite index of 10 secondary indicators deserves greater methodological transparency: what weights were used? PCA or normative weights? Without this information, the index's reproducibility is compromised.

The mediation model assumes linearity and unidirectional causality, but possible feedbacks are not discussed (e.g., green taxation may affect trade openness). It would be advisable to test alternative models (SEM or panel VAR).

The paper applies the spatial Durbin model, but does not justify the selection of the weight matrix (contiguous neighborhood vs. geographic distance). Different matrices can alter the magnitude and sign of the spillovers. Testing various specifications is suggested.

There are obvious errors in the handling of citations ("Error! Reference source not found") that should be corrected, and some references appear incomplete or poorly formatted (future dates, incorrectly cited authors). This affects the seriousness and academic consistency of the manuscript.

It is recommended that the authors explain the software used (Stata, R, etc.), the libraries used, and include codes and databases in supplementary material to allow for replication.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, please check the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors. Thank you for the efforts you have made to improve the overall quality of the paper and your careful revisions. Congratulations on the work done, and all the best to you and yours.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Accept in present form