The Economies’ Ability to Produce Diversified and Complex Goods to Meet the Global Competition: Role of Gross Value Chain, Institutional Quality, and Human Capital

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This article discusses the role of the GVC, institutional quality, and human capital in the production of complex and diversified goods by taking data from different parts of the world. The paper is structured well and looks attractive. However, it can be improved by addressing the following comments.

1.      Provide proper abbreviations. e.g., GVC, GMM, FMOLS, etc., are not defined.

2.      In subsection “materials,” what does the sentence “The panel of 131 countries was employed for the period of 2007–2019.” mean? How was the panel of countries employed? Please elaborate properly.

3.      Compare the results with some reliable methods of data analysis.

4.      The method of sampling is not discussed. Have you thought about the data collection/sampling process? In data collection from such scenarios, there are chances of uncertainty. How will you reduce uncertainty?

5.      In table 2, the probabilities of variables are zero. What does it mean? If the probability of a variable/event is zero, then the variable/event is impossible in the data. Describe the meanings of zero probability.

6.      What are the exact findings? Please describe well in conclusion.

7.      What is the significant contribution of this work? Describe in the paragraph of motivations.

8. Remove grammatical mistakes with the help of a professional.

Author Response

First of all, I would like to thank you for taking out time from your busy schedule to comment on our manuscript. We have tried to include your every comment and suggestion in the revised manuscript. We hope that we successfully addressed your concerns. We also hope it will surely improve the quality of our research work. Please look at the attachment to look at our responses.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Article title:  The Economies’ Ability of Producing Diversified and Complex Goods to Meet the Global Competition: Role of GVC, Institutional Quality and Human Capital

After reviewing this paper carefully, I have some comments below:

- First, authors should not abbreviate in the title and should add an appendix for all acronyms.

- In the section literature review, the authors review very few recent studies related to this topic. Therefore, I suggest the author review and cite some recent studies such as Almustafa et al. (2023); Dang et al. (2022); Nguyen and Dang (2022); Hunjra et al (2020); Nguyen (2022) (see references) … Authors should also introduce relevant theories in the literature review.

- The hypothesis development should be in section 2 and this section should become the literature review and hypotheses development.

In section 3.1, the authors must explain why the data started in 2007, and not earlier.

- The results need further analysis, how is each hypothesis supported or rejected?

- In the introduction, the authors need to introduce the limitations of this study and suggest future research directions.

- There are some grammatical errors, which the authors need to check carefully.

 

References

Almustafa, H., et al. (2023). "The impact of COVID-19 on firm risk and performance in MENA countries: Does national governance quality matter?" PloS one 18(2): e0281148.

Dang, V. C., et al. (2022). "Corruption, institutional quality and shadow economy in Asian countries." Applied Economics Letters: 1-6.

Nguyen, Q. K. (2022). "Audit committee structure, institutional quality, and bank stability: evidence from ASEAN countries." Finance Research Letters 46: 102369.

 

Author Response

First of all, I would like to thank you for taking out time from your busy schedule to comment on our manuscript. We have tried to include your every comment and suggestion in the revised manuscript. We hope that we successfully addressed your concerns. We also hope it will surely improve the quality of our research work. Please look at the attachment to look at our responses.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors did very good research. To overcome some circumstances, they used Quantile regression and FMOLS. Also, they checked heterogeneity and cross-sectional dependence.  Their unit root test had to be selected based on the cross-sectional dependence test. But it is not well described. Please add some information about second-generation and first-generation panel unit root tests. The second missing information is the names of the tables. They wrote only "unit root test " above the table. They can write the name of the unit root test. Moreover, for cointegration. They can write the Westerlund Cointegration test. It will make the result more clear. If they make these corrections, it will be a better article. 

Author Response

First of all, I would like to thank you for taking out time from your busy schedule to comment on our manuscript. We have tried to include your every comment and suggestion in the revised manuscript. We hope that we successfully addressed your concerns. We also hope it will surely improve the quality of our research work. Please look at the attachment to look at our responses.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

1. GVC needs to be defined. The keyword mentions gross value chain.

2. The abstract mention "Therefore, the current study is interesting in modelling the nexus between the GVC, institutional quality, human capital development, and the economic fitness of economies." However, the previous sentence does not mention the importance of GVC for the theory of capabilities.

3. "They talked about the country's long-term growth and development as a process of structural change and production. It means that countries must shift from low-productivity activities to higher-productivity ones."- a better explanation is needed in explaining the need to shift to high-productivity activities and its relation with specialisation since a country may specialise in high tech products.

4. The relationship between GVC an economic fitness needs to be introduced early on in the introduction.

5. The variable EF needs to have a much clearer explanation. How does it measured?

6. The link between GVC and EF needs to be explained in a better way.

Author Response

First of all, I would like to thank you for taking out time from your busy schedule to comment on our manuscript. We have tried to include your every comment and suggestion in the revised manuscript. We hope that we successfully addressed your concerns. We also hope it will surely improve the quality of our research work. Please look at the attachment to look at our responses.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper can be accepted now

Author Response

Respected Reviewer

Thank you very much for taking out time from your busy schedule to review this article. We hope that it will surely increase the quality of the paper.

Reviewer 2 Report

This version is better and can be published.

 

Author Response

Respected Reviewer

Thank you very much for taking out time from your busy schedule to review this article. We hope that it will surely increase the quality of the paper.