Study on the Relationship between Agricultural Credit, Fiscal Support, and Farmers’ Income—Empirical Analysis Based on the PVAR Model

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Please find my comments/suggestions as follow:

Line 15–17: The sentence is confusing. I suggest dividing it into two sentences for better understanding by readers.

Keywords should not repeat the words already mentioned in the title of the manuscript.

Lines 61–63 should be excluded from the introduction section. The introduction section should be extended further, and more literary support is needed in this section as well as throughout the manuscript. The current reference list is insufficient.

Are the central and middle regions different from each other? If not, please use the central region throughout the article, including in Table 1.

Please add the contribution of the study to the literature.

Section 4 should be titled "Findings" or "Results."

Why did you limit yourself to a couple of variables? Please justify it. What about other important variables?

Please also include a study limitation and future research suggestions in a separate section.

 

The author(s) are encouraged to correct academic writing mistakes, in-text citations, and references in the paper. Proofreading is necessary.

Author Response

please check the attached file

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

 

Reviewer Comments

Sustainability.

Manuscript ID: sustainability-2108020

TOPIC: "Study of the effect of agricultural credit and fiscal support on farmers income--Empirical analysis based on the PVAR model"

                                Comments

This paper explores and investigates the impact of agricultural credit and fiscal support on farmers' income in China from 2003 to 2020 using PVAR estimation technique. While I see some potential interest in this work, I have several remarks after reading the paper.

 

1. Since you indicated that LOAN and SUP are in ratio, why did you still take the logarithm of these variables?
2. In lines 154-156, you give the data source for LOAN and SUP; however, you still need to provide the data source for rural farmers' income (NI). Please specify the unit of analysis of the sample or dataset.
3. The authors need to specify how they obtain their national data in Table 3. I assume it is a pull data from the three regional datasets. However, the authors need to specify that in the study.
4. Authors also need to interpret the averages in Table 3 to help readers better understand your dataset. For example, the authors used the ratio of agricultural-related loans to the output value of the primary industry to measure agricultural credit (LOAN). Thus, the authors must explain the average LOAN values of 4.162 in Table 3.
5. Since the study used panel data, the authors need to specify the second model in a panel form by adding the subscript t to the explanatory variables. Also, why did you include rural resident income (IN) as part of the explanatory variables in the second model on page 3?
6. Please clarify how residential income you defined in this study in terms of data source and measurement.
7. Please spend time discussing the empirical results in Table 6. Also, the authors need to explain why the impact of LOAN and SUP on income differs among the different regions. Authors can explain these results considering the channels via which LOAN and SUP affect household income in these regions.
8. The entire work needs editing.
9. End.

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors,

Thank you for submitting your paper to Sustainability. Your research is interesting and I consider it a significant contribution to the existing literature. Overall, your paper is good and you have tried to present the results in a good way, especially, the visualization. 

However, you need some minor improvements in the paper to be accepted for publication.

- I suggest your change the title to something like "Study on the relationship between agri-credit, fiscal support and farmers' income - empirical analysis based on PVAR model". I strongly suggest not to  use the "effect/impact/influence" word(s). 

- I suggest, the authors should stick to this objective throughout the paper:"this paper develops a PVAR model to explore the relationship 12 between agricultural credit, fiscal support and farmers' income from a dynamic perspective." (line 12-13)

- However, in line 15 the authors have claimed causality, which isn't exactly correct and PVAR model are good to detect/measure correlation/predictions only. Please modify all arguments in the paper accordingly.

- The authors did not explicitly explain/describe the data. Please explain in the text e.g., #of observations, how many each each /city etc. explain the data in details.

- Please provide a summary explanation of each table in 2-3 lines under each table [example: Notes: the total number of obs is XXX. column 1 shows ..., column 2 ....]. This will help the reader to quickly understand the each table.

- Similarly, please explain each graph in 2-3 lines in Notes so that the reader can understand without reading all the text. For instance, you need to provide "Notes" under figure 1 and explain each graph and what the dots means on the graph, what is vertical access and what is horizontal access?

I look forward to receiving your revision.

Best of luck.

 

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I am satisfied with authors' response and paper can accepted as it is.

Author Response

Thank you for your encouraging comment!

Reviewer 2 Report

None.

Good Job!

Author Response

Thank you for your encouraging comment!

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for addressing the comments. The manuscript has been improved. However, the authors did not address one of my crucial comments, which is that your study is all about measuring correlation. With the methods used, authors cannot claim causality. e.g., line 20-21 "the positive effect" basically claiming causality between fiscal support and agri-credit. I also strongly advise authors to change the hypothesis: "positive impact" should be "positively associated with". Please modify the rest of the argument in the manuscript accordingly.

For authors' reference, following resources might be helpful in their future research.

Angrist, J. D., & Pischke, J. S. (2014). Mastering'metrics: The path from cause to effect. Princeton university press.

Angrist, J. D., & Pischke, J. S. (2009). Mostly harmless econometrics: An empiricist's companion. Princeton university press.

Powell, S. (2008). The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect. Pearl, Judea, and Dana Mackenzie. 2018. Hachette UK. Journal of MultiDisciplinary Evaluation, 14(31), 47-54.

Pearl, J. (2009). Causality. Cambridge university press.

Morgan, S. L., & Winship, C. (2015). Counterfactuals and causal inference. Cambridge University Press.

 

Author Response

In accordance with your suggestion and the literatures provided, the view on causality in this paper has been changed to correlation. (Lines20-26 62-63 71 81-82 84 90-91 95 99-100 110-111 114 116-118 121 182-183 210-211 392-396 399-402 415-416 421 423-424 444 451 469-470 495 502-503 510-511 526-528 537-541 554 560-561 565 600 605-606 623-635 645-646 651 655 677 682 689 691-692 694 700-701 704-705 715)