Public welfare donation, rent sharing, and income gap within enterprises

Jiantao Chen; Xiang Luo; Xiao Wang

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0309387

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJanuary 1, 2023
17 Apr 2023 Decision Letter - Yasir Ahmad, Editor PONE-D-23-00002Public welfare donation, Rent sharing, and Income gap within enterprisesPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Luo, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. ACADEMIC EDITOR: The manuscript provides insight into an interesting topic but to make it more readable and comprehensive, I would like you to carefully consider the reviewers' comments and revise the manuscript accordingly. There is a need to get help from the language expert to make it more readable.Please submit your revised manuscript by Jun 01 2023 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Yasir Ahmad Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 2. Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure: "The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript." At this time, please address the following queries: a) Please clarify the sources of funding (financial or material support) for your study. List the grants or organizations that supported your study, including funding received from your institution. b) State what role the funderstook in the study. If the funders had no role in your study, please state: “The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.” c) If any authors received a salary from any of your funders, please state which authors and which funders. d) If you did not receive any funding for this study, please state: “The authors received no specific funding for this work.” Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. 3. PLOS requires an ORCID iD for the corresponding author in Editorial Manager on papers submitted after December 6th, 2016. Please ensure that you have an ORCID iD and that it is validated in Editorial Manager. To do this, go to ‘Update my Information’ (in the upper left-hand corner of the main menu), and click on the Fetch/Validate link next to the ORCID field. This will take you to the ORCID site and allow you to create a new iD or authenticate a pre-existing iD in Editorial Manager. Please see the following video for instructions on linking an ORCID iD to your Editorial Manager account: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xcclfuvtxQ. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: No ****** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: Dear Authors, Thank You for so interesting and relevant Article entitled "Public welfare donation, Rent sharing, and Income gap within enterprises". 1. The article is written on a relevant topic, well-structured, and logically proven. 2. The topic is highly original and relevant in the field. 3. The authors duly describe the subject area compared with other published material. 4. The authors could consider some minor improvements in the logic of the presentation of the results. I'd suggest describing some paragraphs about the Sustainability concept in a separate section Discussion. I'd recommend to move to this new separate section some considerations on limitations and future research from the last section Conclusion. 5. The conclusions are consistent with the evidence and arguments presented. 6. The references are appropriate. 7. Please disclose the abbreviations firstly appeared in the text. Reviewer #2: 1. I have problems to understand what is meant due to incorrect English, such as CSMAR database should be “China Stock Market Accounting Research Database”. The authors should definitely employ a language editor before the paper gets published. 2. There is the logical contradiction between the first paragraph of “Theoretical analysis and research hypothesis” with the subsequent arguments, such as “when the public welfare donation promotes the improvement of the business performance of the enterprise, employees will share the rent of the enterprise”, especially the paper fails to distinguish the concepts of managers and employees in the first paragraph of “Theoretical analysis and research hypothesis” clearly. 3. Some explanatory variables in the table are labeled incorrectly(the column (4) in table 5, Table 8). 4. the paper should explain the reason of using the fixed effect model to solve what kind of endogenous problem. And the paper needs to verify the applicability of the fixed effects model through Hausman test. 5. The article requires a theoretical analysis of the reasons for the establishment of tax and performance mechanisms. ****** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: Yes: Sergey Barykin Reviewer #2: No ******** [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0309387.r001
Revision 1
11 Jul 2023 Author Response Dear Editor and Reviewers, We would like to appreciate your effort for having reviewed our submitted manuscript and giving us so many valuable suggestions and helpful comments for improving the manuscript. In the revised manuscript, we have improved this paper thoroughly according to your suggestions and comments. And we marked the revised parts in red font. We are highly appreciated your great support and kind help in improving the quality of this paper. Our detailed responses to all of your individual comments are described in the following parts. 1. I have problems to understand what is meant due to incorrect English, such as CSMAR database should be “China Stock Market Accounting Research Database”. The authors should definitely employ a language editor before the paper gets published. Response 1: Thank you for your valuable suggestions. We have hired a language editor to make compliance modifications and edits to the paper. 2. There is the logical contradiction between the first paragraph of “Theoretical analysis and research hypothesis” with the subsequent arguments, such as “when the public welfare donation promotes the improvement of the business performance of the enterprise, employees will share the rent of the enterprise”, especially the paper fails to distinguish the concepts of managers and employees in the first paragraph of “Theoretical analysis and research hypothesis” clearly. Response 2：This article provides a detailed explanation of the concepts of management and ordinary employees in the dependent variables (1) and (2). In order to provide readers with an understanding of these two concepts when reading the first paragraph, an explanation has been provided in footnote 1 of the first paragraph. When public welfare donations promote the improvement of business performance, employees will share the rent of the company. "The term" employees "refers to all employees of the company, including management and ordinary employees. 3. Some explanatory variables in the table are labeled incorrectly(the column (4) in table 5, Table 8). Response 3： Thank you for discovering and pointing out the issue. We have made modifications to the errors in Tables 5 and 8. 4. the paper should explain the reason of using the fixed effect model to solve what kind of endogenous problem. And the paper needs to verify the applicability of the fixed effects model through Hausman test. Response 4：Due to the presence of certain factors in the model that may not change over time or individuals, these factors are difficult to observe and may be related to disturbance terms, ultimately leading to endogeneity issues. So in order to control for the impact of these factors, we adopted a fixed effects test to alleviate the endogeneity problem of missing variables in the model. In ad dition, this article also validated the applicability of the fixed effects model through the Hausman test, and the test results are listed in the last row of Table 6. 5. The article requires a theoretical analysis of the reasons for the establishment of tax and performance mechanisms. Response 5： The reasons for tax and performance mechanisms have been added to the text. According to the Production Supply Theory, taxation is a costly expenditure for enterprises. Tax incentives can reduce the operating costs of enterprises, keep the output level unchanged while reducing production inputs, and improve the production efficiency of enterprises. According to the theory of economic growth, as operating costs decrease, enterprises can expand their R&D investment, improve their innovation capabilities, and thereby promote the improvement of enterprise performance. Moreover, tax preferential policies can also guide enterprises to invest resources in more efficient areas, which can also promote the improvement of enterprise performance (Tang Hongxiang et al., 2020). Chinese scholars have made a lot of research results on the impact of tax incentives on corporate performance. The empirical results show that tax incentives have a positive impact on corporate technological innovation performance (Jia Jia, 2017), financial performance (Cai Chang et al., 2017), and investment performance (Yu Guansheng et al., 2023). The pre-tax deduction of public welfare donations, as an important tax preferential policy, can also play a role in increasing corporate performance. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0309387.r002
20 Oct 2023 Decision Letter - Yasir Ahmad, Editor PONE-D-23-00002R1Public welfare donation, Rent sharing, and Income gap within enterprisesPLOS ONE Dear Dr. luo, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. I think your manuscript addresses an important area which undoubtedly will be valued for our learned audience. To improve upon your manuscript further, I believe addressing the issues highlighted by the reviewers will improve it to a large extent. Please submit your revised manuscript by Dec 03 2023 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Yasir Ahmad Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation. Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed Reviewer #3: (No Response) ******** 2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Partly ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes ****** 4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes ******5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes ****** 6. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: Dear Authors, Thank You for improving Your manuscript. I can see that the Authors made all requested changes to make the manuscript better. Reviewer #2: 1.Corporate charitable donation is essentially a way of benefit sharing, and the income distribution gap between management and employees is also a manifestation of corporate social responsibility. Therefore, to some extent, this article discusses the relationship between the fulfillment of social responsibility within and outside the enterprise, or the allocation of economic resources between external and internal responsibilities of the enterprise, The article should appropriately elaborate on the impact of this issue on the research process and findings from the perspective of different forms of social responsibility. 2.The theoretical analysis section in the article involves a variety of theories: principal agent theory, effective wage theory, bargaining theory, The rent sharing theory, which are complicated and overloaded. authors should accurately and concisely use related theory to explain. Reviewer #3: I think the paper would benefit from a strong discussion section to add to the current 'conclusions and policy' section that needs to tie everything together, with the extant literature, including why this theoretical approach was chosen, whether there are any conflicting theories that were considered, why the fixed effects approach was chosen over other statistical approaches, why these particular robustness or sensitivity tests were done and importantly explain the limitations of this statistical and theoretical approach. While some of these components are presented in the results and introduction it feels a little scattered and not cohesively tied to current literature. I especially could not find the limitations discussed anywhere. ****** 7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: Yes: Sergey Barykin Reviewer #2: No Reviewer #3: No ******** [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0309387.r003
Revision 2
3 Jan 2024 Author Response Dear Editor and Reviewers, We would like to appreciate your effort for having reviewed our submitted manuscript and giving us so many valuable suggestions and helpful comments for improving the manuscript. In the revised manuscript, we have improved this paper thoroughly according to your suggestions and comments. And we marked the revised parts in red font. We are highly appreciated your great support and kind help in improving the quality of this paper. Our detailed responses to all of your individual comments are described in the following parts. 1. Corporate charitable donation is essentially a way of benefit sharing, and the income distribution gap between management and employees is also a manifestation of corporate social responsibility. Therefore, to some extent, this article discusses the relationship between the fulfillment of social responsibility within and outside the enterprise, or the allocation of economic resources between external and internal responsibilities of the enterprise, The article should appropriately elaborate on the impact of this issue on the research process and findings from the perspective of different forms of social responsibility. Response 1: Thank you for your valuable suggestion. Corporate social responsibility includes four aspects: economic responsibility, legal responsibility, ethical responsibility, and charitable responsibility. In the introduction of the article, we elaborated on the impact of charitable donations on different forms of social responsibility. In addition, we also emphasize that the corporate social responsibility discussed in this paper specifically refers to charitable responsibility. 2. The theoretical analysis section in the article involves a variety of theories: principal agent theory, effective wage theory, bargaining theory, The rent sharing theory, which are complicated and overloaded. authors should accurately and concisely use related theory to explain. Response 2：Thank you for your valuable suggestion. This article mainly uses rent sharing theory and bargaining theory, with the specific idea that public welfare donations increase the rent of enterprises. According to the rent sharing theory, both the management and ordinary employees of enterprises require rent sharing. Then according to the bargaining theory, the bargaining power of ordinary employees is weak, while the bargaining power of management is strong, the amount of rent shared by the two will be different, which leads to an widening income gap within the enterprise. We have adjusted the first paragraph in the theoretical analysis and research hypothesis section of the article. 3. I think the paper would benefit from a strong discussion section to add to the current 'conclusions and policy' section that needs to tie everything together, with the extant literature, including why this theoretical approach was chosen, whether there are any conflicting theories that were considered, why the fixed effects approach was chosen over other statistical approaches, why these particular robustness or sensitivity tests were done and importantly explain the limitations of this statistical and theoretical approach. While some of these components are presented in the results and introduction it feels a little scattered and not cohesively tied to current literature. I especially could not find the limitations discussed anywhere. Response 3: Thank you for your valuable suggestion.We have made changes to the suggestions you made in our conclusions and policies. Consistent with the research of Kong, D. et al. (2017) [35], we controlled for industry and annual fixed effects in benchmark regression, thereby controlling for influencing factors that change over time or industry. In addition, to alleviate the impact of endogeneity issues on our observation results, Heckman test[43]and control for individual fixed effects[44]were used. This result also passed a series of robustness tests. However, despite conducting a series of robustness tests, we were unable to rule out the interference of all endogeneity issues (Card et al., 2016) In terms of research limitations, we have added content on model design. Considering that the rental sharing theory (Zhou W., et al., 2014) and bargaining power theory (Auerbach,A., 2018) we used cannot derive high-order regression results, we did not use a similar inverted U-shaped model (Liu,C. and Gao, J., 2022). Future research can develop a U-shaped regression model of corporate public welfare donations on internal income inequality based on other theoretical deductions. It should be explained here that we have already controlled for industry annual fixed effects in the benchmark regression, in order to maintain consistency with the core reference articles. To alleviate the interference of endogeneity issues on our observed conclusions, we further utilized individual fixed effects to alleviate endogeneity issues. In this section, we have also added corresponding literature to support and compare for discussion. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers2.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0309387.r004
20 May 2024 Decision Letter - Yasir Ahmad, Editor PONE-D-23-00002R2Public welfare donation, rent sharing, and income gap within enterprisesPLOS ONE Dear Dr. luo, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. One of the reviewers has provided valuable input for improving the manuscript and I think if you could be able to address these comments in your revision, the paper will be in much shape for the larger audience. I can understand this might require a bit of time but I am sure it will be worth it. Please submit your revised manuscript by Jul 04 2024 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Yasir Ahmad Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation. Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed ******** 2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 6. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #2: The research question of this paper is to examine the impact and mechanism of public welfare donations on the internal income gap of enterprises. The public welfare donations significantly increase the internal income gap of enterprises through the income tax benefits and the increase in corporate operating income. The research design is rigorous. The findings have certain contribution to understanding the corporate public donations and its economic consequence. The following concerns seem to be further considered. 1.The part of “Heterogeneity test” in this paper seems too simple，the authors could add tests on industry attributes and external supervisory factors, such as media or analysts。 2.The translation marks of the paper are too obvious, especially in the part of “policy implications”. Simultaneously, there are still some wrong description. For example, “the actual tax negative rate (TAXR)”, “China Tai'an (CSMARS) database”, “Guotai An database”. 3.The authors should consider reducing the number of Chinese literature and indicating which ones are Chinese form. 4.The authors should merge and refine the last two paragraphs of the paper, or deleting them directly. ****** 7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #2: No ******** [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0309387.r005
Revision 3
9 Jun 2024 Author Response Dear Editor and Reviewers, We would like to appreciate your effort for having reviewed our submitted manuscript and giving us so many valuable suggestions and helpful comments for improving the manuscript. In the revised manuscript, we have improved this paper thoroughly according to your suggestions and comments. And we marked the revised parts in red font. We are highly appreciated your great support and kind help in improving the quality of this paper. Our detailed responses to all of your individual comments are described in the following parts. 1.The part of “Heterogeneity test” in this paper seems too simple，the authors could add tests on industry attributes and external supervisory factors, such as media or analysts。 Response 1: Thank you for your valuable suggestion. In the heterogeneity test, two factors reflecting external supervision, namely Report Attention and Media Attention, are incorporated. The empirical findings indicate that a more lenient external supervision is associated with a greater positive impact of public welfare donations on the internal income gap of the enterprises. 2.The translation marks of the paper are too obvious, especially in the part of “policy implications”. Simultaneously, there are still some wrong description. For example, “the actual tax negative rate (TAXR)”, “China Tai'an (CSMARS) database”, “Guotai An database”. Response 2: Thank you for your valuable suggestion. The issues present in the translation of the entire study have been thoroughly revised. 3.The authors should consider reducing the number of Chinese literature and indicating which ones are Chinese form. Response 3:Thank you for your valuable advice. As the focus of this article is on income gap within Chinese enterprises, We have included all relevant Chinese literature that we have reviewed. In order to enhance the quality of this paper, 21 citations from Chinese literature have been removed, and the remaining 6 citations are numbered 11, 18, 20, 21, 22 and 24. 4.The authors should merge and refine the last two paragraphs of the paper, or deleting them directly. Response 4: Thank you for your valuable suggestion. The final two paragraphs of the paper have been revised to address any ambiguity. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0309387.r006
11 Jul 2024 Decision Letter - Yasir Ahmad, Editor PONE-D-23-00002R3Public welfare donation, rent sharing, and income gap within enterprisesPLOS ONE Dear Dr. luo, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Kindly review the comments of reviewer 2 and appropriate modifications need to be made in the manuscript. Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 25 2024 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Yasir Ahmad Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation. Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed ******** 2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 6. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #2: 1.There are missing variables " ReportAttention" and "MediaAttention" and the results of their coefficients in columns (3) and (4) of Table 8,repectively. 2.The abbreviation "CSMARS" should be "CSMAR". 3.there are Inconsistent characters in the spaces before each paragraph in this paper. 4.At the end of the paper, the "individual fixed effects model" is mentioned, but in the previous robustness test, individual fixed effect is not controlled. Simultaneouslythe use of the fixed effect model in Table 6 is confusing, the reason and process for its use should be explained. ****** 7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #2: No ******** [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0309387.r007
Revision 4
20 Jul 2024 Author Response Dear Editor and Reviewers, We would like to appreciate your effort for having reviewed our submitted manuscript and giving us so many valuable suggestions and helpful comments for improving the manuscript. In the revised manuscript, we have improved this paper thoroughly according to your suggestions and comments. And we marked the revised parts in red font. We are highly appreciated your great support and kind help in improving the quality of this paper. Our detailed responses to all of your individual comments are described in the following parts. 1.There are missing variables " ReportAttention" and "MediaAttention" and the results of their coefficients in columns (3) and (4) of Table 8,repectively. Response 1: Thank you for your valuable suggestion. We have included the outcomes of the variables "ReportAttention" and "MediaAttention" along with their coefficients in columns (3) and (4) of Table 8, demonstrating significance at the 1% level. 2.The abbreviation "CSMARS" should be "CSMAR". Response 2: Thank you for your valuable suggestion. We have corrected the errors in the text. 3.there are Inconsistent characters in the spaces before each paragraph in this paper. Response 3:Thank you for your valuable advice. We have changed the spaces at the beginning of each paragraph. 4.At the end of the paper, the "individual fixed effects model" is mentioned, but in the previous robustness test, individual fixed effect is not controlled. Simultaneously the use of the fixed effect model in Table 6 is confusing, the reason and process for its use should be explained. Response 4: Thank you for your valuable suggestion. To further account for the presence of time-invariant features over the observation period, we incorporate firm and year fixed effects to control for these influencing factors. The regression results are presented in Table 6. Even after controlling for the firm fixed effects, the coefficient of GAP is 0.019 and significant at 1% level. This suggests that our main regression findings remain robust even after accounting for the firm fixed effects. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0309387.r008
12 Aug 2024 Decision Letter - Yasir Ahmad, Editor Public welfare donation, rent sharing, and income gap within enterprises PONE-D-23-00002R4 Dear Dr. Luo, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice will be generated when your article is formally accepted. Please note, if your institution has a publishing partnership with PLOS and your article meets the relevant criteria, all or part of your publication costs will be covered. Please make sure your user information is up-to-date by logging into Editorial Manager at Editorial Manager® and clicking the ‘Update My Information' link at the top of the page. If you have any questions relating to publication charges, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Yasir Ahmad Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation. Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed ******** 2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 6. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #2: 1. The abstract needs to be further refined and its research value should be embodied. 2. The citation format of literature in the main text should be consistent（e.g. Conclusions and policy implications) ****** 7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #2: No ******** https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0309387.r009
Formally Accepted
26 Aug 2024 Acceptance Letter - Yasir Ahmad, Editor PONE-D-23-00002R4 PLOS ONE Dear Dr. luo, I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now being handed over to our production team. At this stage, our production department will prepare your paper for publication. This includes ensuring the following: * All references, tables, and figures are properly cited * All relevant supporting information is included in the manuscript submission, * There are no issues that prevent the paper from being properly typeset If revisions are needed, the production department will contact you directly to resolve them. If no revisions are needed, you will receive an email when the publication date has been set. At this time, we do not offer pre-publication proofs to authors during production of the accepted work. Please keep in mind that we are working through a large volume of accepted articles, so please give us a few weeks to review your paper and let you know the next and final steps. Lastly, if your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at customercare@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Yasir Ahmad Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0309387.r010

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