Classification of Sustainable Activities: EU Taxonomy and Scientific Literature

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The author should work harder on the approach adopted, establish a clear theoretical background to contextualize the analysis and narrow the scope of the analysis to specific aspects. The main contribution should be emphasised more and the concluding statements should be stronger. Data gathering and data analysis can be reconsidered and discussed more comprehensively. Apart from compiling key studies, a critical approach to the literature is required. Several statements made in the paper are not supported by adequate empirical evidence or by making reference to relevant literature. There is some discussion of the limitations of the study however these are not considered in terms of the implications on the study findings. The recommendation regarding future research requires elaboration. The presentation of the main constructs that anchor the argument could be strengthened. The lead up argument for the study and results section appear to be too loosely constructed. Relevant references should be incorporated as an organic part of the discussion. Web of Science is now operated by Clarivate Analytics, not by Thomson Reuters. Figures are quite unclear.

 

More recent references from Scopus- or WoS-indexed journals are needed. Here are some research suggestions that may complement your approach (I am not the author of any of them):

Ionescu, Luminița (2019). “Towards a Sustainable and Inclusive Low-Carbon Economy: Why Carbon Taxes, and Not Schemes of Emission Trading, Are a Cost-Effective Economic Instrument to Curb Greenhouse Gas Emissions,” Journal of Self-Governance and Management Economics 7(4): 35–41.

Ionescu, Luminița (2019). “Climate Policies, Carbon Pricing, and Pollution Tax: Do Carbon Taxes Really Lead to a Reduction in Emissions?,” Geopolitics, History, and International Relations 11(1): 92–97.

Horick, Colleen (2020). “Industry 4.0 Production Networks: Cyber-Physical System-based Smart Factories, Real-Time Big Data Analytics, and Sustainable Product Lifecycle Management,” Journal of Self-Governance and Management Economics 8(1): 107–113.

Lafferty, Clive (2019). “Sustainable Internet-of-Things-based Manufacturing Systems: Industry 4.0 Wireless Networks, Advanced Digitalization, and Big Data-driven Smart Production,” Economics, Management, and Financial Markets 14(4): 16–22.

Author Response

Please, see the PDF attached

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

There is a lot to like about this article

• An interesting hypothesis.
• The compilation and validation of a comprehensive data set research publications 1990 – 2020 on Taxonomy-related topics.
• The time series and cross-sectional econometrics with country fixed effects.
• The writing, which is careful and grammatically correct, mostly. Ironically, since it is the first thing we read, the abstract is not quite so careful as the main text.

The big issues

There is so much discussion of explaining the reduction in CO₂ emissions per capita that a reader might be excused for believing that CO2 emissions/cap had actually been reduced, but this is not so.  Emissions/cap increased from 1990 to 2020, and there is no evidence of a consistent downturn in recent years.  The “reduction” here apparently refers to the inference that the impact of scientific production on emissions is negative after other influences have been accounted for.  The “reduction” the authors are trying to explain was at best a hypothesis until the regressions were run. 

We see several graphs of time trends in scientific publications – we also need a time-line diagram of emissions/cap 1990 - 2020.

Causation:

• Correlation does not prove causation.
• However, there is a good deal of intuition supporting the notion that scientific production was instrumental in generating environmental concern and motivating action in the public and private sectors.
• But lots of other things were happening that also generate concern and motivate action: discussion in the popular press and media, the IPCC, lots of highly publicized international climate conferences, several rounds of international negotiations aimed at motivating concerted action. How do we identify the one influence that can be considered the key driver?
• The literature on “proving” causation is not very helpful, in that it mostly generates negative results, i.e. arguments that causation can’t be proved. But there is one thread that might be helpful in this case: the cause is the necessary member of a set of sufficient conditions.  You would need to go back well beyond 1990 to show the driving role of scientific findings on these other “causes” (i.e. popular articles, international conferences and negotiations, the IPCC).  But there is good intuition that the science led the way, especially in the early years, and you could call upon that intuition.
• But this argument has its limits, too. Conceding that science led the way in the early years, it remains plausible that in recent years concern has been leading the funding of science and hence production of scientific publications.  This brings us to a possible identification problem: are we seeing an increasing demand for scientific knowledge, an increasing supply thereof, or both (perhaps at different periods in the 30-year data set?

Additional concerns

The EU Taxonomy, if I understand correctly, was announced in March of 2020.  It is quite plausible that this process clarified and ratified a set of EU concerns that go back in time, i.e. the Taxonomy had clear antecedents over time.  Nevertheless, the argument that the Taxonomy had major impact on emissions tends over the prior 30 years seems a stretch.

Abstract

• The abstract does not represent the contents of the article very well. The inference that, because CO₂ reduction is correlated with the number of scientific publications in taxonomy-related areas, the new EU taxonomy will stimulate additional environmental improvements is a stretch: the research production that has been documented mostly occurred in the absence of the Taxonomy, and provides relatively little evidence of the taxonomy as a stimulating influence. 
• Regression analysis is useful for documenting and assessing correlations, but it cannot “verify” anything.

335-357: The discussion of “boundary organizations” – perhaps trans-boundary would be a better name – highlights the concern that lots of institutions and activities are working in the same direction as scientific production, to reduce emissions.  Attributing the emissions outcome to any one of them seems a stretch.

Table 4: It seems odd that when testing for OECD/non-OECD, EU/non=EU, etc, influence, the GDP/cap and GDP/cap squared variables (big drivers of emissions) bounce all over the place from positive to negative, yet are still highly significant in several cases.  This is enough to suggest these relationships need closer examination, and it really matters because the maintained hypothesis of CO2 reduction depends on the existence of upward drivers of emissions that in aggregate outweigh the negative effect of research publications. 

I had wondered what motivated the environmental Kuznets curve discussion circa line 375, but perhaps that discussion is intended to prepare us for the estimated income coefficients in Table 4.  I don’t think the EKC is a lot of help in explaining-away these results.

Author Response

Please, see the PDF attached

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript looks fine now.

Author Response

RESPONSE TO Reviewer #1 (Round 2)

 

The manuscript looks fine now.

We are delighted to hear that the Reviewer #1  appreciated our efforts to meet her/his requests for amendments: we are pleased to understand that the  Reviewer #1  welcome our revisions, that greatly improved our paper. Thank you!

By the way, we remark that the paper has been carefully revised by a professional proof-reader, even if these changes are not tracked for sake of readability.

Reviewer 2 Report

I appreciate the authors' considerable efforts to improve this article, and I strongly support its eventual publication.  I have a few remaining suggestions:

Figures 4 – 6: The left side of these diagrams is unintelligible to readers unfamiliar with the method used.  PC1 and PC2 are unexplained, and could not be found in the text; and the circles are not labeled.

373-6: It is argued that cost-reducing technology may be more important than incentives (e.g. carbon trading and taxes).  These are not competitors but complements: even a low-cost abatement technology will be ignored if incentives are absent.

My earlier comment suggesting a possible identification problem – did research always increase the salience of pollution reductions, did the increasing concern about pollution motivate increased research? – has not been addressed directly.  I do not insist the authors dig too deeply into identification issues, but they should be mentioned among the caveats and limitations.

 

Author Response

See the file attached.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf