Economic and Political Studies (EPS, http://www.tandfonline.com/REPS), an ESCI and Scopus listed journal hosted by Renmin University of China and published by Taylor & Francis Group, calls for papers for a special issue on “Supply-side Structural Reform in Financial Sectors and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)”.

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have been the driving forces for China’s economic growth for the past several decades. According to the China Statistical Yearbook, in 2015, SMEs made up about 97.9% of all registered companies in China, and contributed nearly 58% of the GDP and 68% of exports. Meanwhile, SMEs played a significant role in employment as well, accounting for 82% of total employees in China and creating nearly 75% of the new jobs every year.

Though SMEs have such a great importance for the Chinese economy, they have not obtained enough financing support from the formal financial institutions. According to a survey in 2013, about 66% of recent SMEs had problems to access bank finance. Compared to large firms and state owned enterprises, only 23.2% of bank loans were given to SMEs. The access to short-term capital loans is even harder, only 4.7% were provided to SMEs.

The lack of bank finance for SMEs can be partly attributed to the fact that the banking system privileges lending loans to SOEs rather than to the private sector. Another reason could be the serious information asymmetry between banks and SMEs, where only very limited data are collected for SMEs. To change such a situation, the Chinese government announced in February 2019 to lauch a supply-side structural reform in financial sectors, targeting to give more financial support to SMEs.

To better understand whether and how the structural reform can relieve financial constraints over SMEs, Economic and Political Studies now invites contributions to a special issue on “Supply-side Structural Reform in Financial Sectors and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)”. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in China
• Supply-side Structural Reform in China’s Financial Sectors
• Financial Technology Innovations
• Digital Economy
• Informal Finance
• Supply-chain Finance
• Big-data Finance
• Inclusive Finance

Submission guidelines

The deadline for submission is June 30, 2019. Papers should be submitted to the Special Issue Co-Editors Prof. Ying Fang (yifst1@xmu.edu.cn) or Prof. Haiqiang Chen (hc335@xmu.edu.cn), and at the same time through the Editorial Manager System at http://www.edmgr.com/reps/Default.aspx. The detailed submission guideline and reference style are available at http://www.tandfonline.com/REPS.

It would be highly appreciated if you could kindly forward this Call for Papers to friends, colleagues and other people whom you think may have an interest in this topic. For any enquiries please contact the Editorial Office at journal@ruc.edu.cn.

Editorial information

Special Issue Co-Editors:

Ying Fang, Wang Yanan Institute for Studies in Economics, Xiamen University (yifst1@xmu.edu.cn)

Haiqiang Chen, Wang Yanan Institute for Studies in Economics, Xiamen University (hc335@xmu.edu.cn)