Does Chinese FDI, Climate Change, and CO₂ Emissions Stimulate Agricultural Productivity? An Empirical Evidence from Pakistan

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The subject of the paper is current and the study has an interesting component, but the structure of the manuscript needs improvement. The paper, in general, is not well-written. The text of the paper is not very clear. Introduction should be corrected and the discussion of results section is missing.

The agricultural sector in Pakistan is not well described with facts about: crop structure, level of technology and agricultural equipment, as well as the contribution to CO2 emissions.

The results are interpreted summary and require a more thorough analysis of the results to be able to draw conclusions.

It is recommended to review the points mentioned before publication.

Author Response

(1) The subject of the paper is current and the study has an interesting component, but the structure of the manuscript needs improvement. The paper, in general, is not well-written. The text of the paper is not very clear. Introduction should be corrected and the discussion of results section is missing.

 

Dear Reviewer

Thank you very much for your comments, we have improved the structure of the the manuscript and corrected introduction as well. We have added the structure of the paper as well in the ending of introduction part. The discussion of the study is exist already furthermore, we have cited more previous studies to compare our results with previous studies.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2” literature review” covers and summarized opinions about the study, the section 3 discussed the methodologies used in this paper which includes the model specification and justification of variables with data collection methods and sources. Section 4 presents data analysis results with a discussion of results, at last, section 5 presents conclusions and recommendations.

New added previous studies are as follows

1. Wang, Y., et al., Does FDI Promote or Inhibit the High-Quality Development of Agriculture in China? An Agricultural GTFP Perspective. Sustainability, 2019. 11(17): p. 4620.
2. Latief, R. and L. Lefen, Foreign direct investment in the power and energy sector, energy consumption, and economic growth: Empirical evidence from pakistan. Sustainability, 2019. 11(1): p. 192.

 

(2) The agricultural sector in Pakistan is not well described with facts about: crop structure, level of technology and agricultural equipment, as well as the contribution to CO2 emissions.

Dear Reviewer

Thank you very much for raising your concern with agriculture sector of Pakistan.  We have updated the information in our manuscript as below.

Pakistan agriculture sector consist of five sub sectors such as livestock, fisheries, major crops, minor crops and forestry. The major crops are cotton, wheat, sugarcane, rice and maize and the minor crops are bajra, jowar, gram, barely and tobacco. The major crops accounts 25.6 percent in agriculture value addition and it contributes 5.3 percent in GDP whereas the share of minor crops in agriculture value addition is 11 percent and it contributes 2.3 percent towards GDP. Additionally the contribution of other sub sectors like livestock, fisheries and forestry also have a meaningful contribution in GDP of Pakistan

According to the Lahore chamber of commerce and industries (LCCI) agricultural technology has now been introduced to the agriculture sector of Pakistan by CPEC, according to this plan the agricultural technology would be transferred to the agro-chemicals, pesticides, seeds and fertilizers. This plan would be helpful to educate farmers and with latest machinery, farmers can give more agricultural output with better quality

According to the World Resources Institute’s Climate Analysis Indicator Tool (WRICAIT) the contribution of agriculture in greenhouse gas (GHG) emission is 41% of total GHG emissions.

(3) The results are interpreted summary and require a more thorough analysis of the results to be able to draw conclusions.

Dear Reviewer

We have updated our manuscript according to your valuable comments and updated conclusion and recommendation part accordingly.

 

Reviewer 2 Report

This research explore the effect of FDI, climate change and CO2 emissions on agriculture sector of Pakistan. This is an interesting idea and the results of the anaylisis are promising.

However, the manuscript, in general, is not well-written. There are numerous grammatical errors, dots are missing or misplaced. In addition, sentences are blurred and not well-connected, leading to a lack of coherence. The text is even more problematic in the "introduction", "literature review" and "material and methods". Moreover, at some points the manuscript looks more like an introduction textbook, rather than a scientific paper, for example when Solow and Keynes appeared int eh literature review. As far as the Results and discussion are concerned, they are in a better shape but again several issues appeared.

Therefore, there is an urgent need for revision, otherwise it is not possible to be considered for publication.

In addition to these general issues, some addtional issues are listed below:

1. line. 26-27. not clear. Maybe the part "a strategic partner of Pakistan" can be erased? please rephrase
2. line 35. erase one of the two dots at the end of the sentence.
3. line 39. is there any need for mentioning "production" between "growth" and "high employment"
4. line 43-44 not clear, what do you mean by "economic weight"?
5. line 44. "The best way to impede food calamities is to invest in the agriculture sector". Please ellaborate, erase or merge with the following text.
6. line 51. add bracket [3] after the reference
7. line 53. add "it is" after "and" (or rephrase otherwise)
8. line 58. switch "buy" to "get" or "secure"
9. line 54-55 please justify with facts the evolution of agricultural sector performance
10. line 61 and graph 2. Agriculture is not appeared in the graph. Graph 2 is also not well-appeared (name and values in the vertical axis are not distinguished). Also the letter size of the caption is too large
11. line 63. cannot start a sentence with brackets ([7]).
12.  line 63-64. not clear. please rephrase or ellaborate
13.  line 73. "Both countries On different times..." please correct the sentence.
14. line 83-84. "A rapid increase in urbanization stimulated the industrial pace, and consequently increase in CO2 emission also posed an adverse impact on the agricultural sector and health of country residents." Sentence is not clear. Do you mean that urbanization caused increase in CO2 emissions? please ellaborate and justify.
15. line 91. It is not appropriate, to my opinion, to say that FDI is the ONLY solution. You can say that "it seems to be an effective solution" or something similar to this. Otherwise, you should justify why other alternatives (like public investments, for example) are not viable solutions.
16. line 97-98. "The FDI in this sector could lead to improve agricultural production and many other sectors." How? please ellaborate and/or justify.
17. line 100. put "such as [15], [16], [17] and [18]" in parenthesis.
18. line 101. you cannot put only brackets in this sentence, you shouls also add the reference (ali and ashgar [19] and Ullah [9]). please also correct issues like this in the rest of the manuscript (e.g. line 132, 137), there are a lot.
19. line 105-108. please rephrase, you repeated yourself.
20. line 108. I think you can leave only Graph 1, it has the same data.
21. line 122. "since the beginnings of economics". please rephrase.
22. lines 124-130. not well-written. please rephrase.
23. line 135. define ARDL
24. lines 131-153. not well-written. very confusing text with many small sentences that are not well-connected to each other. Also literature is not appeared correctly, some dots are missing and some dots are not in the right place, make it even more difficult to read and understand the text.
25. the rest of the literature review part is better but still need revision. Maybe you should consider to reduce the whole literature review section.
26. line 266. the equation 1, shows a simple regression with one independent variable. You should replace with a regression with multiple indpendent variables.
27. line 297-299. the text is not clear and issues are not explained. please ellaborate

 

Author Response

(1) This research explore the effect of FDI, climate change and CO2 emissions on agriculture sector of Pakistan. This is an interesting idea and the results of the anaylisis are promising. However, the manuscript, in general, is not well-written. There are numerous grammatical errors, dots are missing or misplaced. In addition, sentences are blurred and not well-connected, leading to a lack of coherence. The text is even more problematic in the "introduction", "literature review" and "material and methods". Moreover, at some points the manuscript looks more like an introduction textbook, rather than a scientific paper, for example when Solow and Keynes appeared int eh literature review. As far as the Results and discussion are concerned, they are in a better shape but again several issues appeared.

Dear Reviewer,

First of all, we would like to thank you for giving us a good suggestion. We have updated and improve the manuscript according to your valuable comments. We have corrected the grammatical errors as well as made the sentence coherence.

 In addition to these general issues, some additional issues are listed below:

(2) line. 26-27. not clear. Maybe the part "a strategic partner of Pakistan" can be erased? please rephrase

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much we have erased “a strategic partner” and updated the whole abstract.

(3) line 39. is there any need for mentioning "production" between "growth" and "high employment"

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much, we have rephrase the whole abstract part.

(4) 4.    line 43-44 not clear, what do you mean by "economic weight"?

Dear Reviewer,

We used economic weight to represent the overall economy, but now we have changed the word to national economy.

5. line 44. "The best way to impede food calamities is to invest in the agriculture sector". Please ellaborate, erase or merge with the following text.

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for comment, we have merge the sentence

6. line 51. add bracket [3] after the reference

Dear Reviewer,

We have added brackets [3] after the reference as follow

Additionally, the GOP (2017-18) [3] emphasized that the agriculture sector has a dominant role in the overall economy; its share is 18.5% to gross domestic products and employed 38.5% of the total labor force of the country. It is after, the agriculture sector performance can boost the overall economic growth and a smart source for the eradication of rural poverty. Over the last decade, the performance of agriculture is not promising mainly because of the deteriorated production of all essential crops.

7. line 53. add "it is" after "and" (or rephrase otherwise)

Dear Reviewer,

We have added “it is after”

It is after, the agriculture sector performance can boost the overall economic growth and a smart source for the eradication of rural poverty. Over the last decade, the performance of agriculture is not promising mainly because of the deteriorated production of all essential crops.

8. line 58. switch "buy" to "get" or "secure"

Dear Reviewer,

We have switched “buy” to secure in our manuscript

9. line 54-55 please justify with facts the evolution of agricultural sector performance

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for suggestion, we have added one more paragraph in introduction part to show the agriculture sector performance as below

Pakistan agriculture sector consist of five sub sectors such as livestock, fisheries, major crops, minor crops and forestry. The major crops are cotton, wheat, sugarcane, rice and maize and the minor crops are bajra, jowar, gram, barely and tobacco. The major crops accounts 25.6 percent in agriculture value addition and it contributes 5.3 percent in GDP whereas the share of minor crops in agriculture value addition is 11 percent and it contributes 2.3 percent towards GDP. Additionally the contribution of other sub sectors like livestock, fisheries and forestry also have a meaningful contribution in GDP of Pakistan (Chandio 2016).

10. line 61 and graph 2. Agriculture is not appeared in the graph. Graph 2 is also not well-appeared (name and values in the vertical axis are not distinguished). Also the letter size of the caption is too large

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for hughligting, we have updated the graph and shifted the graph to Appedix B. below is the new graph for your kind ref.

11. line 63. cannot start a sentence with brackets ([7]).

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for your suggestion, we have revised as below

Accordingly, Krugman [7] states that FDI has the distinctive feature which focuses on resource transfer and sustaining a high -level investment.

12. line 63-64. not clear. please rephrase or elaborate

Dear Reviewer,

The rephrased sentence is as below.

Accordingly, Krugman [7] states that FDI has the distinctive feature which focuses on resource transfer and sustaining a high -level investment.

13. line 73. "Both countries On different times..." please correct the sentence.

Dear Reviewer,

Please see below

Both countries signed many agreements to develop tourism, infrastructure, bilateral trades and different investment projects in Pakistan.

14. line 83-84. "A rapid increase in urbanization stimulated the industrial pace, and consequently increase in CO2 emission also posed an adverse impact on the agricultural sector and health of country residents." Sentence is not clear. Do you mean that urbanization caused increase in CO2 emissions? please ellaborate and justify.

Dear Reviewer,

We have erased this irrelevant part of the sentence from manuscript "A rapid increase in urbanization stimulated the industrial pace, and consequently increase in CO2 emission also posed an adverse impact on the agricultural sector and health of country residents."

15. line 91. It is not appropriate, to my opinion, to say that FDI is the ONLY solution. You can say that "it seems to be an effective solution" or something similar to this. Otherwise, you should justify why other alternatives (like public investments, for example) are not viable solutions.

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for such a nice suggestion we erased  “only solution” and replaced with “it seems to be an effective solution” as per your advise.

By considering all the above facts, the adverse impact of climate change and the lower growth rate of the agriculture sector, FDI seems to be an effective solution to stabilize and enhance the growth of the economy

16. line 97-98. "The FDI in this sector could lead to improve agricultural production and many other sectors." How? please ellaborate and/or justify.

Dear Reviewer,

We have erased the sentence from line 97-98.

17. line 100. put "such as [15], [16], [17] and [18]" in parenthesis.

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you, we have updated as per your suggestion

“such as [15], [16], [17] and [18]”.

18. line 101. you cannot put only brackets in this sentence, you shouls also add the reference (ali and ashgar [19] and Ullah [9]). please also correct issues like this in the rest of the manuscript (e.g. line 132, 137), there are a lot.

Dear Reviewer,

We have added the refrences as well as per your advise

While some researchers examined the role of FDI in different economic sectors of Pakistan (Ali and Asghar [19] and Ullah [9]),

19. line 105-108. please rephrase, you repeated yourself.

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much, we have erased the repeated sentence

22. lines 124-130. not well-written. please rephrase.

Dear Reviewer,

We have rephrased from line 124 -130 as below

In economics, growth has been considered a burning topic. Many theories propose to highlight the factors affecting growth, such as Keynesian theory, classical theory, neo-classical theory, and endogenous growth theory [20-22].  Theories determine those factor which are attracting more FDI such as , Keynesian theory 1930 primarily focused on total spending on the economy and its output, where the economist concentrated on government policies and intervention to prevent an economic recession. Solow [21] outlines that the technological process is an essential factor in stimulating the growth of economics. According to the theory, continuous progress in technology could achieve long-run economic growth, while the neoclassical growth suggests that labor, capital, and technology are important factors to bolster the economy.

23. line 135. define ARDL

Dear Reviewer,

We have added full form of ARDL as below

they applied Autoregressive Distributed Lag Model (ARDL) and concluded results show that the inflow of FDI push to higher economic growth enhances environmental quality and disparity in the case of Singapore. Moreover we have already defined ARDL in Model specification part of manuscript.

24. lines 131-153. not well-written. very confusing text with many small sentences that are not well-connected to each other. Also literature is not appeared correctly, some dots are missing and some dots are not in the right place, make it even more difficult to read and understand the text.

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much, we have corrected the sentence and connect to each other as below

Dickey [23] determined that FDI not only increases the investment level or capital stock but also pushes economic growth, Quattara [24] explores that the affiliation of foreign aid has adverse effects on domestic savings in the context of Côte d'Ivoire. Public infrastructure and FDI together lead to economic growth as the study conducted by (Ridzuan et al [25] examined the role of FDI in three main pillars of sustainable development, like economic growth, environmental quality, and income distribution, they applied Autoregressive Distributed Lag Model (ARDL) and concluded results show that the inflow of FDI push to higher economic growth enhances environmental quality and disparity in the case of Singapore. Similarly, in the case of Pakistan Javaid [26], concluded that FDI is a positive determinant to enhance the gross domestic product and further added that the main issues are high population growth rate, low income, low savings and burden of external debts.. Hence, FDI is a powerful tool to overcome these issues and to promote economic development [19]. As the report regarding "Foreign Direct Investment for Development "published by Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) in 2002 suggests that FDI influences growth by raising total factor productivity, and it proposes the appropriate policies for host countries. In the meantime, FDI prompts technology spillovers, backing human capital formation, contribute to international trade integration, and it supports to create a more competitive business environment as well as enhance enterprise development. Additionally, FDI helps to improve environmental and social conditions in host countries by transferring cleaner technologies [27].

            China is the largest FDI recipient country in the world and a single huge investor in Pakistan by using annual time series data from 1980 to 2014 with ARDL bound testing approach, Hussain and Hussain [11] concluded that market size of China, its inward FDI and direct investment in Pakistan have a positive and significant impact on the inflow of FDI in Pakistan.

25. the rest of the literature review part is better but still need revision. Maybe you should consider to reduce the whole literature review section.

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much, we have erased the unnecessary lines form literature review as well as from all manuscript.

26. line 266. the equation 1, shows a simple regression with one independent variable. You should replace with a regression with multiple indpendent variables.

Dear Reviewer,

We have updated the equation with multiple independent variables as per below

                    (1)

27. line 297-299. the text is not clear and issues are not explained. please elaborate

Dear Reviewer,

The text was confusing, so we erased the confusing text and new two lines as below

Second, at the same time, we can evaluate the results for both short and long-run analyses, additionally the most suitable model for small sample data as compared to the other co-integration techniques. Third, the ARDL model has a single equation to shows the long-run association in a single equation Pesaran et al. [54]. Finally, Pesaran et al. further elaborated that in ARDL model bound testing technique, there is the involvement of unrestricted ECM.

 

 

Reviewer 3 Report

The topic of paper is very relevant and performed study has novelty component however structure of manuscript needs improvement. Introduction should be corrected. Figures and Tables should be avoided in introduction. The references are missing to show the background of the study. The input of paper should be highlighted in introduction. The structure of the paper should be provided in the end of introduction. The abstract also needs to be revised and better structured: problem, aim, novelty, methods, results. The literature review section is missing. The paper should follow IMRAD profile. The Discussion of results section is missing. It is necessary for scientific paper as results of conducted study should be compared and discussed with other studies conducted in this field and analysed in Literature review section. The limits of the study should be clearly addressed in conclusions and future research guidelines should be developed.

Author Response

(1) The topic of paper is very relevant and performed study has novelty component however structure of manuscript needs improvement. Introduction should be corrected. Figures and Tables should be avoided in introduction. The references are missing to show the background of the study.

Dear Reviewer,

Thanks a lot for your valuable suggestion. We have made changes according to your advice. We have corrected the introduction part and removed the figures from introduction and shifter to Appendix B and updated the references.

 (3)- The input of paper should be highlighted in introduction. The structure of the paper should be provided in the end of introduction. The abstract also needs to be revised and better structured: problem, aim, novelty, methods, results.

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for your input. Necessary suggested changes are implemented according to your advice. We have highlighted the paper input in introduction and revised abstract as well and we have provided the structure of the paper in the end of introduction as below.

To take an excellent view of FDI in the agriculture sector, it is imperative to interpret the government policies to attract a comprehensive amount of FDI into the sector. To the best of our knowledge, no empirical study has been investigated in the context of Pakistan to investigate the flow of FDI from Mainland China and its impact on agriculture sector growth. This paper aims to investigate the impact of Chinese FDI and causality among the variables in the context of Pakistan. This paper highlight the overall structure of the agriculture sector and major constraints in the progress of the said sector. Finally, this paper suggests policy implications for the progress of the agriculture sector.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2” literature review” covers and summarized opinions about the study, the section 3 discussed the methodologies used in this paper which includes the model specification and justification of variables with data collection methods and sources. Section 4 presents data analysis results with a discussion of results, at last, section 5 presents conclusions and recommendations.

 (4)- The literature review section is missing. The paper should follow IMRAD profile. The Discussion of results section is missing. It is necessary for scientific paper as results of conducted study should be compared and discussed with other studies conducted in this field and analyzed in Literature review section.

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your comments, we have already added the literature review section after introduction but now according to your comments we have revised many parts of literature review. The discussion of the results also we have added already we have cited previous studies to compare with our results but now we have added more previous studies results and compared with our results. Such as

1. Wang, Y., et al., Does FDI Promote or Inhibit the High-Quality Development of Agriculture in China? An Agricultural GTFP Perspective. Sustainability, 2019. 11(17): p. 4620.
2. Latief, R. and L. Lefen, Foreign direct investment in the power and energy sector, energy consumption, and economic growth: Empirical evidence from pakistan. Sustainability, 2019. 11(1): p. 192.

(5)- The limits of the study should be clearly addressed in conclusions and future research guidelines should be developed.

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for your suggestion. We have added the limits of the study and future research guideline in introduction part as follows

The study also has some limits in terms of access to data and included few variables for the analysis. Historical data for FDI before the 1980s has the reliability issue due to a lack of documentation. For future research, researchers can extend it to the provincial level with the most recent data and can devise the most influential policy at the regional level because some provinces such as Punjab and Sindh are specialized in agricultural production.

 

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Authors have succesfully reply to my commnents

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have revised their manuscript properly. It can be published now as all my comments were addressed and manuscript was corrected and answers to my comments were provided.