Decentralized Economic Complexity in Switzerland and Its Contribution to Inclusive and Sustainable Change

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The document is a strictly qualitative description of two small case studies in Switzerland that highlight the fact that rural communities may be capable of achieving economic success if the right synergies are present.

The description of the two cases is interesting but the author (s) would help herself if she were to accompany the descriptions with statistical data. I found myself wondering how the wave of new immigrants evolved in the last 20 years. Was there a surge in immigration to Switzerland in a particular year that may be explained by some exogenous factor? Did the country of origin of immigrants change over time? What percentage of these new immigrants come from neighboring countries? From developing countries? Are there any trends in migration that may be spotted through time? None of these questions can be answered because the author simply does not utilize any basic descriptive statistics that may give the reader an idea of the evolving pattern of immigration to the country.

Same criticisms can be applied to another important point of the paper, which is the role of apprenticeships. Which specific technical skills are required in both locations? Has there been a constant demand for a particular skill through time or have there been shifts in the demand for other types of technical skills? How many people through time are employed in different fields? Of these, what's the percentage of workers coming from different countries in different areas? Again, the author has no answers to these very interesting questions because she doesn't use any statistical data to back up and support her descriptions.

I am cognizant that the author may not be trained as an economist and hence might not be able to formally test her hypotheses, but some basic descriptive data - pie charts, bar and line graphs, simple correlations - would do much to enhance her work.

In the section where she analyzes decentralization and income inequality, she should cite some of the recent relevant work that has been done in the area (e.g., Cavusoglo and Dincer (2015) Does decentralization reduce income inequality? Only in rich countries; Bojanic (2018) The impact of fiscal decentralization on growth, inflation, and inequality in the Americas; Bojanic and Collins (2019) Differential effects of decentralization on income inequality: evidence from developed and developing countries; Yu, et al (2021) Impact of income inequality and fiscal decentralization on public health: evidence from China)

I would be interested in seeing a revised version if she were to utilize some actual descriptive data in her analysis

Author Response

please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Referee report on:  Decentralized economic complexity in Switzerland and its contribution to inclusive and sustainable change

 

Overall assessment

The paper presents interesting case study findings that show that sustainability and economic prosperity can be achieved in regional economies that do not constitute core urbanised areas. This is a welcome contribution to the literature, which remains characterised by a strong bias towards emphasising the importance of agglomeration and large urban areas for processes of sustainable economic growth. Having said this, I have some concerns about the paper in its present format which I would like the author to consider when revising the paper.

 

Rural-urban distinction

Throughout the paper, the argument is that the literature is placing too much emphasis on the importance of large urbanised areas and that it is becoming increasingly difficult for rural areas to achieve long run sustainable growth, leading to increasing levels of inequality between the two types of area. However, the case studies that are presented in the paper are not really representative for rural areas. Most regions in Switzerland are in relative close proximity and the two regions themselves are not rural. I agree that they do not constitute typical core and large urban centres, but they also do not fall under the category rural. This is also indicated by the fact that the regions of the case studies contain sophisticated manufacturing, innovation and services activities. It would be good if the author clarifies this a bit stronger in the paper.  

 

Keep the findings in perspective

When using case studies, it is important to remain modest in presenting and interpreting the findings. I appreciate the choice of case studies in this research and I can see how the findings contribute to the literature, but the author should avoid using phrases such as that the findings “prove” something (see e.g. the abstract).

Another example from the abstract: the author talks about significant positive external effects for society and the environment. This is very difficult to argue when using the case study approach. I recommend that the author goes through the paper and weakens or rephrases some of the statements where appropriate.

 

External validity

One aspect of the paper that puzzles me somewhat is that the author argues that as social capital is an important explanation for the success of the regions of the two case studies, it will be difficult to replicate their success stories. I would argue differently: in order to be able to achieve similar results in other regions, policy making needs to go further than merely supporting standard economic processes of firms and industries, given the importance of social capital. There is plenty of research on Italian regions that show that their economic processes are also supported by regional trust and cooperation.

Immigration

Although it is interesting that Switzerland appears to benefit from immigration, I don’t really see how this is central to the two case studies. Regarding to section 2 in the paper (“Economic complexity and migration in Switzerland”), I would recommend either to strengthen this section by delving deeper into the impact of immigration on economic complexity, or to mention that immigration is a potentially contributing factor as it enriches the labour force (both quantitatively and qualitatively) but not give it a separate section.

 

Case studies

For both cases, the author describes the full history of their economic development. It would be better if the author concentrates on the most recent phases of their development, and omits providing too many details about earlier phases. For instance, do we need to know that initially mercenaries constituted the Canton of Solothurn’s main export product?

 

Case study findings and urban planning theory

 I agree with the argument that the literature pays too much attention to the core and central areas, but I would recommend that the author has another critical look at this section. Urban planning theory has developed extensively following Christaller’s theory, and there is a lot of disagreement in the literature on the extent to which the development of urban areas goes at the expense of rural regions. Also, the case of Switzerland may not be the best setting to argue against the notion that economic processes in large urban areas work against the development of less urbanised or more rural areas.  So perhaps focus in this section on the main point that the case study findings suggest that indeed high economic complexity and sustainability is not necessarily confined to the large urbanised areas.

In relation to this, perhaps the section on entrepreneurship can be merged with the section on urban planning theory, as they are both making the same point that economic growth and development is not always confined to large urban centralised areas.

 

Social capital

I understand why social capital may play an important role for the two cases, but why does the author discuss social capital in separate sections? It would be better if this was integrated into the discussion of the two case studies.

 

Conclusions

I would recommend that this section is shortened. The first three paragraphs contain several general remarks which are not always directly linked to the paper. It seems that omitting these three paragraphs will make the concluding sector more concise and convincing.

Author Response

please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for taking the time to improve your paper. It is much better and analyzes an interesting case study