Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for the opportunity to read your manuscript. Despite the various advantages, I think there are also a number of shortcomings. The abstract meets modern scientific criteria. The introduction should mention the purpose of the study and, as will be mentioned later, connect your work more with the works of world science, and not just Chinese authors.
The authors should also provide a critical assessment of the green transformation and finance, because now they only state how good it will be.
It is especially important to supplement your work with the works of other scientists from around the world, because now there are only Chinese authors and then it is not clear how the authors contribute to world science. I would recommend taking inspiration from this source: Kotseva-Tikova, M., & Dvorak, J. (2022). Climate policy and plans for recovery in Bulgaria and Lithuania. Romanian journal of European affairs, 22(2).
Maybe the authors can provide as much as possible a substantiated impact in section 2.2, because now there is no evidence, but only reasoning.
The authors of the manuscript do not think about the journal's audience, which is international, because they do not seek to explain how the local government system in China functions in general. A comparison with abroad would be especially attractive, for example. Vitálišová, K., Dvořák, J. (2023). Differences and Similarities in Local Participative Governance in Slovakia and Lithuania. In: Rouet, G., Côme, T. (eds) Participatory and Digital Democracy at the Local Level. Contributions to Political Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20943-7_8
In the data sources section, the authors simply declare that they selected 283 prefecture-level cities in China from 2003–2023. It remains unclear why these cities or not others, how the selection was carried out, what the selection criteria were. It also remains unclear why the period from 2003-2023.
It is not very clear from Table 1 how the indicator Green total factor productivity (TFP) and the corresponding categories and measures will contribute to the explanation of municipal competition.
In order to have conclusions that respond to the hypotheses raised, I think a discussion is also needed where we could explain our findings in a broader international space.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thanks for the opportunity to review this article. Please note the followings:

1. The article discusses one of the key significant topic that has been an issue recently worldwide.
2. A very detailed analysis and description of the literature and content have been found in this research still few improvement is needed.
3. Clear research motives and questions need to be stated in the introduction section.
4. Clear organisation of the study needs to be shown in the last section of the introduction section.
5. I advise authors to place the numbering of the hypotheses, for example, H1, H2, in the figure of the developed model to allow us to understand the path of the hypotheses.
6. In line 274, what is that error? Please correct it.
7. Please provide a comprehensive conclusion in para rather than points or numbers, this is an academic paper and not ppt.
8. Please develop two additional separate sections and deeply discuss the theoretical and practical implications for the study. Please offer solid recommendations for policymakers and also for future researchers.
9. Kindly split the discussion from the analysis sections. In the discussion section, please focus on your result, discuss it and compare it with previous research and logically elaborate on your findings.
10. You may develop a concise research model to make it clear for the readers to understand the key model you have.
11. Can you define your operational definitions in this research?. Please provide concise and simple definitions for them.

All the best,

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

needed

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors of the manuscript assessed the relationships between green finance, local government competition, and industrial green transformation using the example of China. The topic of the study is very relevant. The authors used modern econometric methods, which allowed them to obtain a number of interesting and important results. At the same time, I am also forced to note the presence of certain shortcomings that are inherent in the text of this manuscript, namely:

1. Main comments:

1.1. The authors do not describe in sufficient detail the arrays of input and intermediate information on the basis of which the empirical analysis was performed. This remark is specified below when formulating comments 2.4-2.6.

1.2. The description of the research methodology is not complete enough. It is necessary to describe in more detail the procedure for calculating a number of variables, primarily the industrial green transformation level of city (equation (1)), the green finance index of city (equation (1)) and the local government competition level of city ((equation (3)). It is also necessary to justify equations (1)–(5) in more detail.

2. Other comments:

2.1. I ask authors to carefully check the presence of all necessary references to sources of information throughout the text of the manuscript. This is especially true in cases where the names of documents are indicated (lines 38, 40-41).

2.2. I cannot find a clear formulation of the purpose of the study in the Introduction. Such a formulation should perhaps be given after line 105 ("Considering the above, the purpose of this study is..."). It would also be advisable to describe the positive and negative features of local government competition more clearly in the Introduction (for example, in the second paragraph).

2.3. In my opinion, the justification of the research hypotheses in section 2 should be related to the previously identified gaps in the analyzed literature. For example, immediately after line 154, you should write something like this: "At the same time, the mechanisms of the impact of green financing on industrial transformation in China have not yet been fully explored. Therefore, we propose the following hypotheses:".

2.4. It is worth citing the sources of information (for example, relevant websites) mentioned in lines 286-297. These sources can be listed in References. In this case, you can refer to these sources in the text by numbers in square brackets.

2.5. In subsection 3.1, you should also indicate what proportion of all prefecture-level cities in China were covered by this study.

2.6. Of particular interest are the values of the variables under study, i.e. intermediate information. It is obvious that providing such information for each city would lead to a significant increase in the volume of the article. However, it would be possible to provide the average values ​​of the variables under study within the framework of descriptive statistics in order to have a general idea of the values of these variables.

2.7. It is impossible to start a subsection (in this case, subsection 3.3) with a table. It is better to move this table, perhaps, to subsection 3.3.

2.8. In section 4, more attention should be paid to the issue of statistical significance of the results obtained. In particular, the coefficients of determination that appear in tables 2-5 seem too low.

2.9. Also, in section 4, insufficient attention is paid to the issue of multicollinearity. Are there statistical relationships between independent variables?

2.10. The manuscript lacks a “Discussion” section. Although, on the other hand, the discussion of the results is done in section 4. Therefore, if the authors do not move the discussion to a separate section, section 4 would be better called “Empirical Results and Their Discussion”.

2.11. In the last section, a conclusion should be drawn as to whether all hypotheses are met.

2.12. Also, at the end of section 5, it would be advisable to describe the limitations of this study and indicate directions for further research on this topic.

2.13. The design of the manuscript needs improvement. In particular, the figure and all tables should be referenced in the text. Table 1 has two titles. It is also necessary to correct typos (lines 274, 530). Finally, I recommend performing a final grammar check. In particular, when formulating hypotheses, it is worth mentioning China.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

Thank you for the updated manuscript. 

all the best 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Dear Editors,

The authors have implemented all required recommendations. Accept. 

all the best 

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

satisfied

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript has improved. The authors have taken into account the comments I made in the previous review.