Does Environmental Policy with Veto Power Lead to Heterogeneous Emission? Evidence from China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Author(s),

Environmental pollution has become an important problem all over the world. Also, environmental quality plays an important role in attracting investment, intelligence and migration, making environmental objectives a part of modern economic system building. Environmental pollution in China needs to be analyzed from a political economy perspective, as the level of pollution is impressive, above normal and beyond the impact of industrialization. In addition to this, the concept of “one-vote veto” is also a very interesting research topic. In the study, a comprehensive evaluation was made in terms of variables that are very important and appropriate to the literature.

I congratulate the authors for the research and manuscript.

Author Response

Thank you for your approval of the manuscript. After careful consideration, new references are added and some part of discussions are rewritten for improvement.

Reviewer 2 Report

The title indicates the topic covered in the text. The summary is well written, comprehensive and concise enough. Keywords are appropriate, "official characterization" can be rethought.

The introduction puts the topic in context very well. The authors indicated the purpose of the study, the structure of the text should be described.

The authors critically reviewed the literature (48 sources). However, due to the relevance of the topic, it should be expanded and updated - 19% (9 sources) come from more than 10 years ago, only 29% (14 sources) were published in 2020 or later.

Based on the analyzes (correct and logical way of reasoning), the authors put forward five hypotheses. Results and models are consistent and transparent. The discussion should refer more broadly to the sources used.

Conclusions and implications are correctly formulated.

Author Response

Thank you for your valuable comments. Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper examines the effectiveness of the "environmental" target-based performance assessment as a tool to enhance the performance of local officials in reducing Suphur dioxide emissions. The results indicate evidence for the effectiveness of environmental targets in performance evaluations. The authors have done well in coming up with a very interesting topic in the emissions discourse. Before the paper can be accepted for publication, there is need for clarification on the following major issues:

1. Although the radiative forcing effect of sulfur dioxide is greater than that of CO2, CO2 remains the main gas of global concern in China. There is need for a clearer justification for the authors to focus on SO2 and leave out other GHGs. In the same vein, a scrutiny of the implications of the current results on the emission of other GHGs is important. Is the strategy designed to reduce SO2 emissions only?

2.The authors used data from different sources. There is need for further clarity on how the data was reconciled given that it was gathered based on different systems. There is need to apply a method to check and explain similarities and/ or differences of data from different sources and logically justify the use of different data sources. Can data from Baidu Encyclopedia and China Statistical year book have the same error margin, recording, cleaning, storage system? There is also need to be clear about how these data sources complemented each other (what data was available from which source for which years).

3. Please clarify on the potential of national policies to distort the influence of environmental targets and their implementation at provincial level. We learnt during COVID-19 that national policies influence local decisions, including environmental targets, among other things.

4. The methodology does not provide details on the method that was used for error determination. The authors must include error modelling and model bias calculation. This is not clear in the current manuscript.

5. For all the figures, please label both axis to improve on clarity.

6. Address the minor grammatical errors throughout the manuscript..check line 32 per-capital income is per-capita income. line 83 and various minor corrections for clarity.

This paper is promising and might have great impact in improving the evolution of economic policies towards greener options. If the above issues are addressed"/ clarified, there will be a great improvement on the scientific soundness of the manuscript.

 

 

The English Language is good. Just very minor issues to attend to.

 

Author Response

Thank you for your valuable comments. Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The revisions are acceptable. The paper is ready for publication. Congratulations!