Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Overview and general recommendation:

I found the paper to be overall well written, but many sentences are too long in my opinion and could be a reason for difficultness to understand. Please, consider rewrite sentences longer than 3-4 lines.

The work analyzes the impact of land resources misallocation on carbon emission in China. Panel data from 30 provinces were used in the research. The analyzes were made both for the entire country and for three separate subregions (eastern, central, and western). The adopted methodology assumes the use of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) model. A quick search of the Web of Science database indicates that many articles on a similar topic have been written recently. This is not an objection, but a highlighting of the importance of the subject. Interesting and new is the use of an independent quantity related to land management (land resource misallocation) as a variable. However, it is poorly described. The authors only briefly described the misallocation of land resources (LRM) indicator. It is difficult to understand how LRM was actually was done. There is also a lack of indication of the LRM value at which the peak CO2 emission could be expected. The predictive power of the model would also be enhanced if authors would define the LRM min and max thresholds that have been observed. In the absence of the above, the recommendations to politicians seem largely blurry and sound quite obvious (new technology is better than old, and sustainable development policy is better than profit maximization policy). I believe that the topic of the manuscript is very important, and the approach is interesting. However, the authors should conduct a more in-depth discussion. Especially in the context of "Chinese decentralization" and its influence on CO2 emission. 

I have included my detailed comments in the manuscript.

Personally, I think that the authors' hopes that technological progress will lead to a drastic reduction in CO2 emissions are unjustified. High technologies are expensive and inaccessible to large numbers of ordinary people. Until now, countries have gotten richer either at the expense of other countries or at the expense of natural resources. Technology so far only increases economic inequality, which denies the original Kuznets hypothesis. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thanks for your comments, please see the details in the response letter.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

I read the whole paper and the authors took time to review the literature and analyze the data accordingly. The results have also been well presented, the methods articulately described. I like the conclusion and policy recommendations made. Good work

Author Response

Thank you very much.

Reviewer 3 Report

Even if the specific topic and specific areas of study are a bit outside my area of study, I overall highly enjoyed reading and reviewing the manuscript “Understanding the impact of land resource misallocation on carbon emissions in China” by Ma and co-authors. This article uses a theoretical and modeling approach to analyze the effects of land resources misallocation on carbon emissions in 30 Chinese provinces from 2005 to 2017. The authors found 3 general results or patterns related to: the power and effect of local governments (by province or region) on land use, markets, and therefore misallocation; the regional differences on carbon emissions within China, related to such misallocations; and the specific mechanisms explaining misallocations, which are related to the industrial structure (and type), and the restriction of technology or a very strong dependence on the primary sector. Overall, as said before, the article is nicely written and well explained, even for people outside of the specific research area (as one would expect for a good article). Also, the regressions and other statistical analyses done are quite good, I like them -even if for some readers they can be too much. Lastly, I also find the policy recommendations nice -although, more specific explanations on how to implement them are missing.

 

Find below more specific comments.

Notation: P1.P1.L1 (Page 1, Paragraph 1, Line 1) (Next time, include line numbers in the documents, as this facilitates a lot the job of the editors and reviewers)

 

Abstract

P1.P1.L2. Why is “misallocation of land resources” abbreviated as “LRM”? Should not be “MLR”? Just curiosity…

P1.P1.L4. Production of reduction? If the former, then eliminate “production”, as with “vital role in carbon emission” is more than clear. Change “The paper” for “This study”.

P1.P1.L5. Change “emissions and constructs” for “emissions, and constructs”. Test the impact of what? Be specific. Add a comma (,) before “based”.

P1.P1.L8-9. Change “among industrial land and commercial land and real estate” for “among industrial and commercial land, and real estate”.

P1.P1.L11. Change “Land resource misallocation in the eastern” for “LRM in the eastern”.

P1.P1.L17-23. This phrase and list of things is way too long. I suggest to split in two or three, to gain clarity.

 

Introduction

P1.P2.L6. Maybe change “reform and opening-up” for “reform and market opening-up”.

P1.P2.L7-8. But, is not China also (and recently) a global leader in green energy (besides Europe)? Significantly more than the US, for example.

P2.P1.L2. Change “carbon emissions but” for “carbon emissions, but”.

P2.P1.L7-9. Have these measures been effective?

P2.P2.L13. Change “carbon flux [17-19], for example, construction” for “carbon flux [17-19], showing for example, that construction”.

P2.P3.L.1. Change “Using a framework” for “Using the framework”.

P2.P3.L7. Change “allocation and provides” for “allocation, and provides”.

 

Background and theoretical hypothesis

P3.P2.L12. “More government revenue” in the form of what?

P4.P2.L6. Change “the quality,” for “the quality”.

P4.P3.L7. Change “Therefore, hypothesis 1 is that” for “Therefore, our first hypothesis is that”.

P4.P3.L9. Change “of industrial” for “of the industrial”.

P4.P4.L5. What do you mean by “the real economy”, and why is real state economy not part of it?

P4.P4.L10-11. This phrase reads incomplete, there is something missing.

P5.P1.L6. Change “productivity and reduce” for “productivity, and reduce”.

P5.P2.L1. Change “In summary, hypothesis 2 is that” for “In summary, our second hypothesis is that”.

 

Model and data

P5.P4.L4. Is there an alternative to that “inverted U-shaped curve”?

P6.P2.L2-3. “Science and technology” what? Investment? If so, clarify this in the text.

P6.P2.L3. Change “investment and foreign” for “investment, and foreign”.

P6.P2.L7. Change “in the Table” for “in Table”.

 

Results

P6.P4. Change the name of the section from “Results” to “Results and Discussion”, as that is what this section contains.

P6.P4.L1. Change “regression” for “regressions”.

P6.P4.L2. Change “the HT test” for “the Hausman test (HT)”. Here and thereafter, just use “HT” instead of “HT test”, as the abbreviation is clear.

P7.P1.L2. Change “and random effect” for “and of the random effect”.

P7.P1.L3. Table 3: Specify in the Table legend (below), what the values represent (not the asterisks neither the values in parenthesis). I guess they are F values, but this needs to be specified in the Table.

P7.P3.L1. What exactly is “LE2”. “LE” was explained before, but not “LE2”, which just appears in Table 3 and 4 without further explanation.

P7.P4.L13. Is never explained what you mean by “science and technology level”.

P8.P2.L5. Change “Hubei, Hunan)” for “Hubei, and Hunan),”.

P8.P2.L10. Table 4: remind to the reader (in the Table legend) what “FE” and “RE” refer to.

P9.P1.L3. Change “(1), (3) and (5)” for “(1), (3), and (5)”.

P9.P1.L10. Change “the quality, of investment attracted as” for “the quality of investment attracted, as”.

P10.P1.L1. The words “land resource misallocation” are quite repeated through the text, despite the abbreviation (LRM) being clear since the beginning. Avoid this, here and elsewhere.

P11.P1.L3. They passed “the significance test” at what level? Specify.

 

Conclusions

P11.P2.L13. This part “promote carbon emissions but failed to pass the significance test” does not makes sense, as to “promote” something, such increase needs to be statistically significant.

P11.P2.L18. Add a comma (,) after “carbon emissions”.

P11.P3.L1. “Implications” or recommendations?

Author Response

Thanks for your comments, we revised the paper as you suggested. Please see the details in the response letter.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf