Reaction to Idiosyncratic Economic Shocks—Economic Resilience of Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript is prepared well and explores the resilience of Hungarian SMEs to economic shocks.

Below are some suggestions for consideration:

1- In the abstract, simplify the complex sentences and highlight key findings.

2- Provide additional details on data cleaning and matching procedures.

3-  Strengthen the link between theoretical background and empirical findings to highlight the study's contribution to existing literature.

4- Include a more detailed discussion of the study's limitations

5- Elaborate on specific recommendations for policymakers to enhance the practical relevance of the findings

Comments on the Quality of English Language

• English is good but can be improved further by addressing minor grammatical errors and improving sentence structures for better readability.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your feedback and constructive remarks.
For the detailed response of the authors please see attached file.

Best regards:
Ferenc Tolner

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Congratulations to the authors for their research and approach to their manuscript. It is perfectly understandable and has a high impact on the study of economic resilience. Personally, I believe that the methodological approach can be applied to various studies of companies in different sectors.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your feedback and constructive remarks.
For the detailed response of the authors please see attached file.

Best regards:
Ferenc Tolner

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Please check the following comments/suggestions to improve the submitted article.

1. Don't use abbreviations in the abstract. The first line of the abstract consists of an acronym without a definition, which does not provide good information to the readers. 

2. The abstract should indicate the objective of this research work, the methodology utilized, and their specific outcome at the end of the abstract.

3. What are the limitations of the existing literature? It should be mentioned and highlighted in the introduction section. 

4. What is the unique contribution of the authors to the existing literature? It must be highlighted at the end of the introduction. 

5. At what basics are the bigger and larger cities categorized? I can't understand the difference between these two words in the Fig. 2.

6. Line 215, the citation needs to be updated. It shows a question mark. Please correct it in the revised version. 

7. Can you justify how this research article fits into the scope of MDPI-Sustaianbility?

The results and interpretation are good.   ----------------------------------

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your feedback and constructive remarks.
For the detailed response of the authors please see attached file.

Best regards:
Ferenc Tolner

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Title: Reaction to Idiosyncratic Economic Shocks – Economic Resilience of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

This article addresses a topical issue on resilience to economic shocks by SMEs using Hungarian businesses as a case study. The article is fairly well written. However, the authors should consider the following to improve it.

Abstract

Line 9 – who are the key stakeholders of national economics

1.         Introduction

Line 15 – Holling et al – not in the list of references

Line 50 – could state the main objectives of the study clearly and how they have been achieved

2.         Overview of related literature   

Line 106 – 2.1 Prospects of Predicting SME Resilience – this follow under the main heading after several paragraphs – the suggestion is that they should be a separate sub-section immediately after 2 in line 52. 2.1             will then become 2.2

 

Line 57 Aleksic et al should be referenced as [2] to consistent throughout the paper, similarly, line 71 Jung et al – should be referenced as [16].

Line 65 According to [15] instead of “According to Somers [15]

Line 118 “…reactions to economic disturbances is not just company relevant then also for the  - to make it more clearer it should be “…reactions to economic disturbances is not just company relevant but also for the

 

 

3.            Data analysis

The section presents the description of data used in the study – hence the heading Data Analysis is inappropriate.

 

I suggest that this section be incorporated under 4. Methodological Approach as a sub-section

Line 135-136 – This group of companies are especially significant in terms of total generated GDP – how significant i.e. what proportion of GDP do they generate

Line 149 – companies at interest – should be companies of interest

 

4          Methodological approach

 

Figure 3: consider shortening the title

Line 215 – [?] is there a missing citation

Lines 244-247 – not clear

Does this mean that only 25,889 different tax numbers provided 301,684 observations and out of these 40,695 could be shock reaction assigned where a set back in sales growth worse than -10% took place.

Please re-write the statement to make it clearer

Line 264 – layout that accounts the different … should be layout that accounts for different

 

 

 

5              Results, Discussion

Consider shortening the title for Table 2 and Table 3

Line 300 is hanging – kindly expand

Line 425 - Conclusion, Future – this should be a sub- heading and should be numbered as such

Comments on the Quality of English Language

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Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your feedback and constructive remarks.
For the detailed response of the authors please see attached file.

Best regards:
Ferenc Tolner

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for your revision.