Can China’s Digital Inclusive Finance Alleviate Rural Poverty? An Empirical Analysis from the Perspective of Regional Economic Development and an Income Gap
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Very interesting research
I would suggest to add notes to tables in order to explain notations
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Point 1: Please, add notes under the table and indicate what is in parentheses and explain asterixes
Response 1: Thank you for your professional and valuable comments. As you said, if the content in the brackets and the asterisks in the table are not explained, it is easy to cause readers doubts. Therefore, the author has commented below Table 4.
Point 2: the table 5 is not very clear
Response 2: Thank you for your valuable comments. Column (1)-column (3) in Table 5 shows the robustness test results; column (4)-column (6) shows the endogeneity test results. The results in Table 5 include two parts: the robustness test and the endogeneity test. The title of Table 5 is that the expression of the results of the robustness test is not comprehensive. Therefore, the authors have changed the title of Section 4.2 to Robustness and Endogeneity Tests. The title of Table 5 was changed to Robustness and Endogeneity Test Results.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear authors,
Your manuscript is concisely writen and explains the methodological steps supporting your findings.
In you final section, I recommend that you emphasize in the fact that digital inclusiveness and literacy is a matter relevant not only in context of poverty.
In the other side of the spectrum, Sweden, for instance, is aiming to increase the digital literacy of its forest owners in order to promote more sustainable decisions. See:
Mensah, D. M. J. (2021). Digital literacy for Sustainable Forest Management practices among Individual Owners in Sweden. Master Thesis, SLU, Sweden.
Holmström, J. (2020). Digital Transformation of the Swedish Forestry Value chain: Key Bottlenecks and Pathways Forward. Retrieved from Mistra website.
once you expand in your discussin section the relevance of your topic for global conversations, I think that you are ready to publish your paper.
Best
Author Response
Point: Your manuscript is concisely writen and explains the methodological steps supporting your findings.
In you final section, I recommend that you emphasize in the fact that digital inclusiveness and literacy is a matter relevant not only in context of poverty.
In the other side of the spectrum, Sweden, for instance, is aiming to increase the digital literacy of its forest owners in order to promote more sustainable decisions. See:
Mensah, D. M. J. (2021). Digital literacy for Sustainable Forest Management practices among Individual Owners in Sweden. Master Thesis, SLU, Sweden.
Holmström, J. (2020). Digital Transformation of the Swedish Forestry Value chain: Key Bottlenecks and Pathways Forward. Retrieved from Mistra website.
once you expand in your discussin section the relevance of your topic for global conversations, I think that you are ready to publish your paper.
Response : Thank you very much for your affirmation of the paper, and also very grateful for your professional and valuable comments. According to your suggestions, the author has added the discussion content in the last section of the paper and expanded the scope of the discussion content.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The main objective of the paper is to analyze how measures promoting Digital Inclusive Finance (DIF) can help to reduce rural poverty. To do so, the paper estimate a model with regional data for 30 Chinese provinces from 2011 to 2020.
The objective of the paper is of high interest. The paper is well-writed, well-structured and well-founded. The data and the empirical strategy seem appropriate to the objectives proposed.
Particularly interesting is the mediating analysis that DIF can have on regional poverty indirectly through its effects on inequality and economic growth levels. Also relevant is the analysis of the effects of the three main components of the DIF index (Coverage Breadth, Usage Depth and Digitization Degree), and the regional heterogeneity analysis performed.
In fact, in my opinion, the most valuable and particularly interesting contribution of the paper is in all the robust checks performed on the first model 1. And it is precisely because of the interest of these robust checks, for example dividing the sample in the two periods to analyze the effect of the policies, or the use of instrumental variables to control for the possible endogeneity problem, regional heterogeneity, or the analysis of the indirect mediating effects, that leads me to think that in reality these robust checks should replace the original model rather than complement it. In any case, the empirical analysis seems satisfactory to me, and I believe that the need to carry out these robust checks is well understood.
Just to make a suggestion, I understand that it is indeed not necessary to explicitly show the value of the estimated coefficients for all the control variables in tables 4 to 7. But perhaps the result of some joint significance test of all these control variables could have been included, precisely to show the relevance of including them in the regression models.
I can only congratulate the authors for their excellent work.
Author Response
Point: The main objective of the paper is to analyze how measures promoting Digital Inclusive Finance (DIF) can help to reduce rural poverty. To do so, the paper estimate a model with regional data for 30 Chinese provinces from 2011 to 2020.
The objective of the paper is of high interest. The paper is well-writed, well-structured and well-founded. The data and the empirical strategy seem appropriate to the objectives proposed.
Particularly interesting is the mediating analysis that DIF can have on regional poverty indirectly through its effects on inequality and economic growth levels. Also relevant is the analysis of the effects of the three main components of the DIF index (Coverage Breadth, Usage Depth and Digitization Degree), and the regional heterogeneity analysis performed.
In fact, in my opinion, the most valuable and particularly interesting contribution of the paper is in all the robust checks performed on the first model 1. And it is precisely because of the interest of these robust checks, for example dividing the sample in the two periods to analyze the effect of the policies, or the use of instrumental variables to control for the possible endogeneity problem, regional heterogeneity, or the analysis of the indirect mediating effects, that leads me to think that in reality these robust checks should replace the original model rather than complement it. In any case, the empirical analysis seems satisfactory to me, and I believe that the need to carry out these robust checks is well understood.
Just to make a suggestion, I understand that it is indeed not necessary to explicitly show the value of the estimated coefficients for all the control variables in tables 4 to 7. But perhaps the result of some joint significance test of all these control variables could have been included, precisely to show the relevance of including them in the regression models.
I can only congratulate the authors for their excellent work.
Response : Thank you very much for your full affirmation of the content of the paper, and also very grateful for your professional and valuable comments. According to your comment, the author has added a variable correlation test in Section 4.1 of the paper to explain the rationality and scientificity of the selection of control variables, and also rule out the possibility of multicollinearity among variables.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
