Who Values Corporate Social Responsibility in the Korean Stock Market?

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

As it comes to the Abstract - the objective is not well indicated so it does need revision.

General opinion - the paper in the interesting way presents the problem of Sustainability in terms of historical CSR basis. The analysis remains relevant and results are interesting. The presented text meets the formal criteria of scientific studies: the empirical analysis is based on a theory and the findings are based on the conducted analysis, but in my opinion it needs a little effort before acceptance.

The methodological part is very accurate.

The logic of this paper is fundamentally flawed and cannot be supported by the evidence the authors listed.

I would prefer the authors to provide a more up-to-date references. Now the reference list contains a high proportion of self-citations, with some of them not even peer-reviewed.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

It is not clear from the abstract is the authors refer to one firm in the case of CSR rating, to another firm in the case of DJSI incorporation, to several firms further on.

Page 2, rows 46-58: there is no reference regarding CSR in Korea.

What does "high CSR performance" mean? There should be a discussion regarding the development of the hypothesis. What is included in the article right now is not enough.

Why is the second question more important?

Page 2, row 87: it states that there are 11 groups and the behaviour of all of them is analysed. The abstract states that there are four groups. So, which is the case here?

The Introduction seems too long and not focused on what an introduction should normally include (see the guidelines). The research questions can be moved after the literature review.

The results and conclusions are well presented. I suggested adding references to the relevant literature in order to explain the results obtained and the conclusions drawn.

The authors use relevant literature. Some of the sources are published in topical journals. Yet, the majority of the sources are (very) old. The list of references can be improved.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper investigate the correlation between the inclusion of a company in a CSR index, as a measure of the high performance of CSR and the reaction of investors on the Korean stock market.

It is a interesting paper, but there are some aspects that the authors need to improve:

In section Methodology you can provide a figure for relation between variables.

Did you test all the variables for unit root? 

Table 6 show that the results are significant statistics only in two situations. Please explain why your model can be relevant for your research area.

The comparisons of the results obtained with other similar studies are missing you can try to find other research with similar results.

Also, in the section Conclusion the limits of the paper and future research are not specified, you have to mention this aspect.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper is improved, it can be published.