Transaction Costs in Agri-Environment-Climate Measures: A Review of the Literature
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
3.3. Data collection: In figure 1 you also noted 9 records from other sources!
Figure 1: Other sources like what? Lines 256-260: Presenting results without statistical point of view? Is that logical?! Other sections are appropriate and acceptable.Check and consider all my comments highlighted in attached file.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
You can find enclosed the revised version of the manuscript entitled “Transaction costs in Agri-environment-climate measures: a re-view of the literature” submitted for publication in Sustainability - Special Issue “Transaction cost and policy analysis”.
We would thank you for your comments and appreciated suggestions for improving the quality of the manuscript.
We have addressed all issues raised by you. The changes are highlighted in red font in the text. For your convenience, we have provided our responses to your comments directly in the PDF file.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The theme of this article is particularly topical.
In the introduction and in section Review of the theory of transaction costs, a serious analysis of the theoretical framework and specifically of the meaning of this type of costs is made, but some clarifications are needed.
In the Introduction the authors cite Coase (1937) that transaction costs (TC) are "the cost of using the price mechanism." A bit further, the authors point out that "in line with Coase's early analysis" transaction costs are "all the costs involved in a transaction, except those of production". Further, they indicate (instead of providing further definitions) the types of costs that are considered TC. For example, very often the costs of "the collection of information about the transaction, as well as the process of negotiating, contracting, and making payments" are considered to be typical TC. The authors also point out that "one of the most common classifications used to analyse TC encompasses" "(1) search costs," (i.e., searching for suppliers and/or clients), (2) negotiation costs, and (3) monitoring and enforcement costs. They also quote Hennart (1993) "that the right decision would be internalizing the transaction within a hierarchy when the TC are too high and using the market mechanisms when TC are low."
To start with, the definition that TC are "all the costs involved in a transaction, except those of production" is undoubtedly true, but it can also be misleading, because for different types of firms, entities, organizations, or hierarchies costs such as search costs , negotiation costs, and monitoring and enforcement costs can be part of production costs depending on the institutional structure of the organization/hierarchy. Many large firms have a marketing or and/or a law departments that carry out search for clients and negotiations. This is a typical case of internalisation of activities and costs and is precisely what Coase discusses in "The Nature of the Firm", but as we see in many papers, including many of the papers studied by this article, researchers tend to assume that all kinds of searches for clients and all forms of negotiations incur TC. Additionally, regarding the types of TC, Allen (1999) distinguishes between TC based on the neoclassical tradition and TC relevant to property rights economics. Williamson (1985) also makes such a distinction. Such a classification of two types of TC is based on Coase's two seminal papers of 1937 and 1960 (Slaev 2023).
The authors do not provide a convincing explanation as to why they consider only the costs of local authorities and farmers. The purpose of funding AECMs is to induce positive environmental changes in a given territory or in a larger scope. It follows that to assess the efficiency of AECMs, the costs of the main stakeholder groups should be taken into account. Obviously, local authorities and farmers are not the only stakeholders. A very important stakeholder group is the population/local people living in the territory (and may be also outside the territory), who are consumers of the quality of the environment. Most of these people are not farmers. They incur environmental costs, measured by the value of the ecosystem services used or deteriorated. This is important because in most studies related to TC, researchers pursue a single goal – reducing TC, but this can lead to a negative effect. To assess the effect (the performance) of AECMs we need to assess the costs/losses incurred and/or benefits received by the inhabitants of the territory.
Finally, it is not clear what the authors mean by concluding that the analysed studies in most cases are focused on quantitative analysis, and only 3 studies are focused on qualitative analysis. It is reasonable that the analysis of TC related to AECMs (and any other processes) should be focused on quantitative indicators. But quantitative changes inevitably give rise to qualitative changes. For example, greater costs (larger amounts of money invested) in planting trees will lead to more trees being planted, and this will lead to greater amounts of carbon sequestration, which is a change in environmental quality. Therefore, first, any quantitative changes in investment in AECMs will impact the environmental quality. And in research, changes in quality are mainly monitored through quantitative changes in the parameters of the environment, air or water.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
You can find enclosed the revised version of the manuscript entitled “Transaction costs in Agri-environment-climate measures: a re-view of the literature” submitted for publication in Sustainability - Special Issue “Transaction cost and policy analysis”.
We would thank you for your comments and appreciated suggestions for improving the quality of the manuscript.
We have addressed all issues raised by you. The changes are highlighted in red font in the text. Also, the responses in the attached .docx file are typed in red.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
First, I congratulate the authors, for composing this review work on the Transaction costs in Agri-environment-climate measures. However, some major concerns remain. In my opinion, unless these issues are comprehensively addressed, this work, in its present form cannot be accepted for publication.
· Check for grammatical errors.
· In some cases, the meaning of the sentences is not easily understood due to grammatical mistakes.
· It would be better to write in a simpler language.
· Arrange the structure of the sentences correctly.
· Since there is the usage of a number of abbreviations, add a list of abbreviations, at least in the supplementary file or Appendix.
· Explicitly mention the Inclusion and exclusion criteria point by point.
· Move Table 2 to the Supplementary file.
· Compose a comparative analysis table of included articles with their distinguishing features.
· There should be a literature review section that encapsulates previous literature reviews published in this or related research sphere (preferably in tabulated format). It should explicitly mention the advancements made in this work over previous works.
· If possible, at least, some of the empirical understanding generated from review work should be represented via Figure(s).
· Explicitly mention (a) key outcomes (insights) of this work, (b) the drawbacks of this work, and (c) the future scope (prospect) of this research domain.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
You can find enclosed the revised version of the manuscript entitled “Transaction costs in Agri-environment-climate measures: a re-view of the literature” submitted for publication in Sustainability - Special Issue “Transaction cost and policy analysis”.
We would thank you for your comments and appreciated suggestions for improving the quality of the manuscript.
We have addressed all issues raised by you. The changes are highlighted in red font in the text. Also, the responses in the attached .docx file are typed in red.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 4 Report
Dear Authors,
Thanks for this article, I think it has a lot of potential. However, as it is written now, the potential of it is highly undermined by not stating clear aim and objectives, by providing results that are general, by not motivating the urgency of it (climate adaptation strategy), by presenting it as if it is not interesting but informing of general differences. The introduction should be shortened to a clear description of the context of research, the problem statement, clear aim and objectives (which should be treated systematically in the result section). Two reviews are inserted before the method section which are out of place. Discussion is lacking. With a major revision, with restructuring and clarification, I believe this article can become a valuable contribution to Sustainability given the urgency of discussing climate adaptation strategies. This is a very relevant to answer: What can the governments do? Is this particular strategy of Agri-environment-climate measures (AECM) effective and when is it more effective? What other measures can be implemented instead? Pls see some comments in the pdf attached.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
You can find enclosed the revised version of the manuscript entitled “Transaction costs in Agri-environment-climate measures: a re-view of the literature” submitted for publication in Sustainability - Special Issue “Transaction cost and policy analysis”.
We would thank you for your comments and appreciated suggestions for improving the quality of the manuscript.
We have addressed all issues raised by you. The changes are highlighted in red font in the text. For your convenience, we have provided our responses to your comments directly in the PDF file.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 4 Report
The review article called “Transaction costs in Agri-environment-climate measures: a review of the literature’, is an interesting contribution to the literature about transaction costs. Especially the last part of the result chapter is interesting, where a table provides a nice overview. Still, there are some flaws that needs to be addressed in my view. This relates with the new versions of the presentation of main aim and objectives in the Abstract and Introduction. Also, the English needs some attention, as the aim is written in past tense and not correctly formulated. See comments attached. Also, in Chapter 4.2. Objectives of this study, the review is not addressing differences in objectives, but differences in scope and focus. It is as it now is presented misleading. Pls see comments attached. Therefore, a minor review needed in my opinion.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
We would like to express our sincere gratitude for the useful feedback and suggestions you provided for our paper titled "Transaction costs in Agri-environment-climate measures: a review of the literature". Your expertise and attention to detail have greatly contributed to improving the quality of our work.
We have carefully considered all of your comments and suggestions and have made the necessary changes in our manuscript. Firstly, we have edited the different parts in which we describe the aim of our paper to ensure consistency with the message and contribution we intend to transmit. Furthermore, we have reorganized and modified the results section, especially section 4.2, in line with your suggestions. We fully agree with your comments regarding the difference between aim and scope and have made changes accordingly. Additionally, we have corrected some English-related mistakes that were previously overlooked and requested a native English speaker colleague to proofread the entire manuscript to ensure it is well-written.
To make it easier for you to identify the changes we have made, we have replied to your comments directly in the PDF.
Once again, we appreciate your time and expertise in reviewing our manuscript, and we sincerely thank you for your valuable input, which has significantly improved the quality of our work.
Sincerely,
Dr. Riccioli
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
