Dear Authors,

Thank you for your considered reply to the first round of peer review. It is clear that both reviews were positive in that they see merit in the motivation of the work, the direction you have taken, and your results.

The reviews themselves were importantly and helpfully different with Reviewer 1 covering philosophical and conceptual issues, while Reviewer 2 provided much more specific recommendations. I am satisfied that you have understood all reviewer’s comments and are able to respond to all major issues.

I invite you to submit a revised version of your manuscript. I will send this for a further round of peer review.

Given the ambition of your manuscript, there are non-trivial philosophical issues that could be discussed at some length. I will balance the need to allow this discussion to develop while ensuring that the peer review process of your manuscript is done in a timely manner. It is clear that you will not be able to address all issues. From your response document, I am confident that you will be able to satisfactory address all major issues and therefore will be able to revise your manuscript sufficiently.

Dear authors, thank you for your detailed response to the two reviewer reports. These reports were significantly different, roaming across disciplines and ranged from the conceptual to the specific. This is both expected and desireable given the stated ambitions of your manuscript. I am satisfied that you have addressed each of the major substantive points raised and would now like to give the original reviewers the opportunity to respond to your comments and changes.

Dear authors, based on the completion of the latest round of independent peer review I am very pleased to inform you that I would like to accept your manuscript for publication – subject to minor revisions. After you have made these revisions I will review them. There will be no further requirement for independent peer review.

Review 1 report contains some very valuable observations and in places recommendations. I do not think there are any specific issues that need to be addressed as the reviewer says most of these are largely foundational. I would recommend considering their comments about participatory modelling as this may be a good and specific issue with which to at least acknowledge some of the reviewer’s concern. I do not think any substantive changes or additions are required here.

Reviewer 2 report contains some specific and easy to address issues. I reproduce them here:

End of page 19 on the version with track changes: “Overall the DISCOUNT model…”. It seems that sentence is not fully written out (see “…”). Please check.

Suggestions to the authors:
2. With respect to an answer of the authors to reviewer 1: “The taxonomy approach means that things that were previously included in models as opaque and unquestioned systems can be unpacked and critically examined. Model users who were not the model builders would really benefit from knowing (to take the example above) whether the representation of an education decision process in a model is in MET or CUL.”

Suggestion: Perhaps this illustrative short example on education could be added to the manuscript. It points out the additional value of clarifying the assignment of submodule to a certain taxa by the modeller.

3. With respect to an answer of the authors to reviewer 2: “Since to our knowledge it is the first published model which endogenizes the choice of discount factors used in climate policy.”

Perhaps this is also worth to mention as novelty in the paper?

Once you have made your revisions and upload, I will do my best to ensure a speedy route to publication.

Best wishes
James Dyke

Dear Authors, thank you very much for submitting your revised manuscript. Having review this, I am very pleased to accept this for publication.
Best wishes
James Dyke