PONE-D-23-36973Corporate Governance, Financial Performance and Economic Policy Uncertainty: Evidence From Emerging Asian EconomiesPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Zhang,

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Evan Poh Hock Lau

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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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

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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: No

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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: Yes

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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: I writed my notes on file. Its contributions to policy makers and literature is not clear and weakly. Sample is not enough. Authors comments must be depend on result of analyse. Comments are very generally. Some comments are weakly and not depent on literature

Reviewer #2: The manuscript entitled "Corporate Governance, Financial Performance and Economic Policy Uncertainty:

Evidence From Emerging Asian Economies" investigates an important subject. The following comment could enhance the level of the work:

1. The introduction could be strengthened by providing a more concise and focused explanation of the research gap and objectives.

2. Consider integrating more recent references to enhance the currency of the literature review. see for example:

Abdullah, H., & Tursoy, T. (2023). The Effect of Corporate Governance on Financial Performance: Evidence From a Shareholder-Oriented System. Interdisciplinary Journal of Management Studies (Formerly known as Iranian Journal of Management Studies), 16(1), 79-95. doi: 10.22059/ijms.2022.321510.674798

3. The theoretical framework is well-developed, drawing upon various theories such as agency theory, stewardship theory, and stakeholder theory. However, it would be beneficial to provide a clearer explanation of how these theories inform the hypotheses.

4. Ensure that each hypothesis is clearly stated and aligned with the theoretical underpinnings.

5. Provide more details on the specific variables used to measure corporate governance, financial performance, and economic policy uncertainty. what is DGP? do the authors mean GDP?

6. Clarify the rationale for selecting the generalized method of moments (GMM) for robustness analysis. How could you calculate Adjusted R square for GMM in table 4? How could the correlation between ROA and ROE be 1? see: Abdullah, H., Tursoy, T. Capital structure and firm performance: evidence of Germany under IFRS adoption. Rev Manag Sci 15, 379–398 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11846-019-00344-5

7. Discuss any potential limitations of the methodology, such as data availability or sampling bias.

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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: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: Plos One Review....pdf

PONE-D-23-36973R1Corporate governance, financial performance, and economic policy uncertainty. Evidence from Emerging Asian EconomiesPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Zhang,

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.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Oct 19 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,

Ricky Chee Jiun Chia

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

[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: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

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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

Reviewer #3: Partly

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: No

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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

Reviewer #3: Yes

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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

Reviewer #3: No

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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 authors followed my comments all. So, the manuscript is not publishable from my perspective. . .

Reviewer #3: #1: My main concern is the justification and supporting resources of choosing the three countries, Pakistan, China and Malaysia as comparison. For example Pakistan chosen for its unique governance, China for transitioning to market-orientation, and Malaysia for its robust regulatory environment. Where is the further proof or justifications for these?

#2: Accordingly, there is no discussion about the comparison between the three countries, which is not aligned to the claimed contribution.

#3: Sentences in page 3 and page 22 are repeated verbatim, regarding the contribution of the study.

#4: Referring to these sentences, the second contribution is missing. From first then after that was the third.

#5: What is CSR Suitability Committee? Are you trying to actually state 'Sustainability' instead of 'suitability'?

#6: Does the item CSR committee, covers Sustainability Committees as well? What if the committee is combined with another committee and not stand alone? Is that also included?

#7: The abbreviations used for the items in your results tables for example ACI, AGE, BS, etc were not spelled out anywhere in the text. Some were, but some not. The reader may make a guess based on the conceptual framework but that is not appropriate and may be inaccurate and subjective.

#8: Assuming that my concern in #1 and #2 is addressed, and that it turns out that the choice of the 3 countries are reasonable, justified and has significant impact, I have no further comments on the method and data analysis used.

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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: Yes: Hariem Abdullah

Reviewer #3: No

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[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.

Corporate governance, financial performance, and economic policy uncertainty. Evidence from Emerging Asian Economies

PONE-D-23-36973R2

Dear Dr. Chaoyang Zhang,

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.

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Kind regards,

Ricky Chee Jiun Chia

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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