Economic Complexity and the Mediating Effects of Income Inequality: Reaching Sustainable Development in Developing Countries
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This is a novel and interesting paper that demonstrates the relationship between economic complexity and human development. And it also has an important policy implication in that it shows how income inequality mediates the relationship between the two.
Overall, this paper explains the research question, relevant backgroud and literature, research design and results in an appropriate manner.
I just have a comment (or a question) on the hypothesis (or the intepretation of the result) concerning the relationship between economic complexity and income inequality.
The authors explain how economic complexity reduces income inequality. Specifically, "the productive structure of a country is constituted by a broad mix of complex products, a vast scope of occupational choices, flatter hierarchy of occupational structure, scattering skills and knowledge, and extended class consciousness - all of these decrease income inequality" (lines 292-295)
This makes sense, but I believe that there is another possibility. Here, authors implicitly assume that the economy becomes horizontally complex, but the economy can become vertically complex. When everybody in the economy was a farmer, everybody earns a similar level of income, but as economy advances and becomes complex, there are some new occupations that require high skill and thus reward with high income. In this case, economic complexity increases, rather than decreases, income inequality. And this is what actually happenned since 1980's or 1990's. There is a hugh literature on this "skill-biased technological change" in economics.
Maybe, this vertical complexity does not apply as much as horizontal complexity to developing countries and thus authors' point is still valid, but in any case, it would be great if authors mentioned both of these possibilities and how these are relevant to the sample they study.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
First of all, I would like to thank you for your useful comments.
I added a part in my literature review regarding the skill-biased technical change. It is indeed important to include the counterarguments of my hypothesis. I hope that my paper is clearer now. I also made some other arrangements regarding other reviewers' comments. Please let me know if you think that anything else should be improved.
Sincerely
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper apply Hierarchical linear modeling to the issue of evaluating the relatioship between Economic Complexity and Human Development and how it gets mediated by Income Inequality.
The research question is interesting, but the article does not reach basic standards of scholarly work in almost every respect.
First of all, the writing is barely at a first-draft level. The literature review in particular jumps from one topic to the next without constructing an argument. "Moreover" is used as a standard conjuction between paragraphs. There is also a problem with english in particular (the authors use the word "primordial" nine times in the paper, and I believe they do not really know what it means), but that is not the main issue.
The literature is very badly analyzed and reported. Many articles cited are likely not read by the authors. Citation 6 and 28 are the same citation, reported twice. The same is true for citation 9 and 35. Citation 20, 21 and 54 are again always the same citation. It is an extremely amatorial work. On line 188 the authors write “even though the ECI has been criticized theoretically and mathematically[32], it is the only index providing free data about the productive structure of countries.” even if citation 32 (Tacchella et al. 2012) itself provides an alternative index for the productive structure of countries. And there are dozens of different indeces used in the literature, completely ignored in the literature review. Furthermore, relevant papers are ignored, for example Sbardella et al. "Economic development and wage inequality: A complex system analysis." PloS one 12.9 (2017).
The methodology is interesting, but it is not explained at all. Why data availability considerations pushes to remove some variables from level-1 (line 400)? And what are level-1 and level-2? Why centering the variables should solve for collinearity (line 404)? A lot of sentences in section 3 look like the authors are assuming the reader knows the specific software they use for the analysis and its specific quirks.
Overall I cannot reccomend this paper for pubblication in its present form.
PS: There are hints of plagiarism, as the font changes at random between paragraphs (for example, line 239 to 240 and again at line 247), a footprint of copy&paste.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
First of all, I would like to thank you for your useful comments.
Regarding my writing, I changed the word "primordial" to ones that should fit better in the sentences. I also checked all my citations and references to be sure that they do correspond to one another.
Regarding the indexes other than the ECI, I added a part in the literature to explain it. I also made an extension of my explanations regarding my methodology using HLM. I hope that it is clearer now.
Regarding the font changes between the paragraphs, it is not my doing, due to the fact that my paper was using "calibri" when I sent it to the Journal, and they sent it back with another font. Before sending this paper, I used Turnitin to check whether my paper had plagiarism or not.
I also made some other arrangements regarding other reviewers' comments. Please let me know if you think that anything else should be improved.
Sincerely
Reviewer 3 Report
Quite interesting subject with notable policy implications, well treated both theoretically and empirically. The fact that income inequality is also addressed by the discussion, makes the paper even more appealing. The Introduction motivates the issue and refers to what follows next in the manuscript. The section on the Literature Review is really an exhaustive critical review. The quantitative part spelled out through the next two sections, is an authoritative one. And, the Concluding section restates the paper's theses, summarizes the main points of evidence, discuss the significance of the points that the authors want to make in general, and gives directions for future research on the subject. The overall structure of the paper is a paradigm of how a research paper should be written, while the style of the exposition makes it accessible to both academics and laymen.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
I would like to thank you for your comments. I made some arrangements regarding other reviewers' comments. Please let me know if you think that anything else should be improved.
Sincerely
