Pollution Transfer under Intergovernmental Competition: Suppression or Opportunity

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article deals with an interesting topic, it uses, from my point of view, appropriate methods for its analysis and generally it is worth publishing.

I  recommend:
- The article investigates whether there is a transfer of pollution related technologies and production to the Chinees cities that are not accredited as the National Civilized City and thus do not follow high environmental standards. I found it relevant to distinguish between cities that participate and not participate in the accreditation. The article should, however, specified in deeper detail how both groups were selected for the research, if there are other differences among both groups, respectively among cities under the research and that could affect your results.adding to the theoretical framework some comparison with the situation in other countries, if other countries have similar experiences (i.e., shifting ecology harmful production to the regions that do not pay environmental issues sufficient attention). The comparison can be also mentioned in the discussion section.

- I think that the authors use a proper methodology. They can, however, use as the dependent variable, not only wastewater emission but also other indicators such as indicators concerning air pollution and soil pollution. The control variables should be extended in the control group (=participated in accreditation), if it is possible, about pollution indicators before the cities start to participate in the accreditation. If there is be improvement in pollution indicators, it supports the idea that accreditation has a real impact on the value of pollution.  

-I think that the conclusion is consistent with the evidence and arguments presented in the article. However, I recommend dividing Conclusion in two parts -first Recommendation containing points 1-3 (rows 487-518 of the original article) and then “true” Conclusion summarizing the main results and findings.  

-I recommend considering also the following articles:
Fiscal Decentralization and Environmental Pollution: A Spatial Analysis. Xia Chen and Jianmin Liu. Discrete Dynamics in Nature and Society 2020.
The spatial effect of fiscal decentralization on haze pollution in China. Zhonghua Cheng & Yeman Zhu . Environmental Science and Pollution Research volume 28, pages49774–49787 (2021).
How does environmental information disclosure affect economic development and haze pollution in Chinese cities? The mediating role of green technology innovation. Yanchao Feng, Xiaohong Wang, Zhou Liang. Science of The Total Environment. Volume 775, 25 June 2021, 145811

- careful English reading. For instance the sentence on row 110: “local governments spare no effort to pursue rapid economic 110 expansion.” Should be without “no”.

See above. 

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

In order to evaluate the environmental impacts within the setting of intergovernmental rivalry, this study uses the National Civilized City certification in China as an extreme policy shock.

The language of the paper and the literature are well. However, the empirical model must be elaborated in detail. Below I provide some more detailed comments that I think would improve the quality of the paper.

The paper uses the DID method for panel data. At first, why we don’t need to test to select fixed effect and random effect regression? It is a very important step in the panel data. How can we use DID regression without checking the fixed effect versus the random effect? 

It is written that “Table 3 shows the logistic regression coefficients” but what are the independent variables? Where are the regression results? Could you define independent variables? Also adjusted R squared of logistic regression is given but the F test of the regression is not. In “4.3 Benchmark Regression Results” section there are some explanations but the model is not clear. 

In Table 4 lnww and lnpiww were not defined. Is ww variable name and does ln mean logarithm? What are the graphs of the variables before the logarithm and after the logarithm? Please attach graphs as a supplementary file or Appendix. In Table 5 there are three different regression results but the models are not clear. Please write the mathematical formula of the models to understand their independent variables. For Table 6 we need mathematical formulas of the models too. Also, definitions of the dependent variables are not clear. Moreover, there is no significance test of the models (such as F test) . In equation 2 we can see the definition of IOIS but we cannot see the definition of the I and J (moreover we have one capital letter J and one lowercase j) which is in the formula in IOIS. 

In Table 7 the authors state that Table 7 shows heterogeneity analysis. However, there is no definition of the heterogeneity. After the definition of heterogeneity, we need to have an explanation of testing heterogeneity. How can we understand whether heterogeneity exists or not?

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors, I find the article interesting and the problem well exposed and of great relevance.

I think it is still necessary to explain in more detail the DID (for readers less specialized in econometrics), as well as the advantages of a PSM-DID over the traditional DID.

It is also convenient to separate more clearly methods from results, because in your manuscript they tend to overlap.

In references, if it is possible to add references 2023. Another point to improve is the quality of the figures.

The discussion seems to me adequate and relevant.

Author Response

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Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors answered all the questions clearly.

It can be accepted.

Best Regards