Youth Guarantee: Looking for Explanations
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Please refer to the appended file.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for the review and your kind words. It was extremely useful and we tried to improve our text based on it. Please see the attachment for a deeper explanation.
Kind regards,
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript offers an interesting analysis of the EU policies to tackle the increasing rate of the youth Not Employed in Education or Training (NEET).
The article focuses on the countries of the Mediterranean European Economic Area, because of their high NEET rates and shared (supposed) common characteristics, like the common culture shared through their history and its implication in social concepts like the ideas of family, work and education and their economic structures and economic situation with high levels of youth unemployment.
However the four countries considered (Spain, Greece, Italy and Cyprus) are not so similar, and there would seem to be a need for some even more detailed discussion relating to both the role and features of the labour market in each country (e.g. the different impact of the 2008 financial crisis, or the different level of central and/or local regulation or deregulation).
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for the review and your kind words, it was useful and we tried to improve our text based on it. Please see the attachment for a deeper explanation.
Kind regards,
The authors.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
In my opinion, the article presented for review is an example of presenting social reality in the quantitative paradigm typical of many contemporary analyzes.
Filled with many different data, collected in a methodologically correct way. However, the procedure used, known as "mathematization", has some flaw. The social world cannot be formulated and characterized by numbers.This risk is accurately reflected by the very "definition of mathematization" - mathematization in social sciences is making things that are close to man distant and strange.It would be worth asking, then, what does it mean for us people (after Z. Baumann).I cannot find the answer to this question in the article. Anyway, unfortunately, it is not even set by default.Hence, I perceive the entire article as neatly, but thoughtlessly, describing with numerical data immeasurable social processes. However, I understand this trend in contemporary research, because perhaps someone will collect such partial studies and subject them to in-depth reflection.However, while the authors clearly indicate the rationale for the starting date (2014) of the data used, there is no clear explanation as to why until 2017. Was the 2018-2020 period "dead"?And more - from the point of view of 2021 (taking into account the entire drama around the pandemic), the study presented for evaluation may only have the value of historical records. Perhaps it will be useful one day for the above-mentioned studies of in-depth reflection.For this reason, the title of the article should rather be different. Instead "... Looking for explanations", rather "....But it has already been, and will not be back anymore".I consider the article little to contribute to scientific knowledge, at best as interesting historical records.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for the review, it was useful and we tried to improve our text based on it. Please see the attachment for a deeper explanation.
Kind regards,
The authors.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
I acknowledge the authors' explanations. However, I do maintain my doubts about the paradigm used. However, I assume that the presented data may constitute a contribution to further, in-depth research analyzes. After reading the explanations and corrections, I propose to publish the article in a corrected version.