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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to understand women’s approaches to acquiring financial and other resources is essential for closing the entrepreneurship gender gap. In nearly 40% of economies, women’s early-stage entrepreneurial activity is half or less than half of that of men’s. Design/methodology/approach Even when there is extensive literature on female entrepreneurs, the authors review the findings through a Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-1)9 crisis lens, trying to find new perspectives and solutions. With the approach of a systematic review of 4,520 publications on financing topics related to female entrepreneurs, various sources of financing available to female entrepreneurs are considered: bootstrapping, banks, business angels, venture capital and crowdfunding. Findings Identifying potential gender bias both on the supply and the demand side of financing, this research highlights new directions in encouraging female entrepreneurship and gives guidelines to public organisations on how to foster advanced forms of financing for female entrepreneurs in COVID-19 times. Social implications The COVID-19 pandemic has posed an unprecedented challenge for economies and companies. Female entrepreneurs are the ones who have been hit harder, as they overcome pre-existing barriers, such as lack of access to finance, lack of networks and mentors and gendered priorities, among others. Without ensuring gender policies to counter these incremental negative effects, the authors face the risk of widening the gender gap. Originality/value Regarding previous systematic reviews of literature, this paper focusses on a specific challenge, how women entrepreneurs finance their activity, with a double vision: supply and demand of money.

This editorial introduction to this special issue provides an overview and a conceptual framework of governance and economics of smart cities. We begin with a discussion of the background to smart cities and then it focuses on the key challenges for consideration in smart city economics. Here it is argued that there are four dimensions to smart city economics: the first is regarding the scale of global market for smart cities; the second issue concerns data to be used for smart city projects; the third concerns market competition and structure and the fourth concerns the impact on local economy. Likewise, smart city governance framework has to be considered a layered and multi-level concept focusing on issues of transparency and accountability to the citizens.

This paper analyses the WiFi4EU initiative, the measures proposed by the European Commission (EC) to speed up public access to Wi-Fi throughout Europe in the coming years, ranging from rapid mechanisms to subsidising the infrastructure. We set out to analyse how these measures are incorporated into the EU policies for building a Digital Single Market and the EC's regulatory tradition, and what the impact of this initiative is likely to be. As this innovative initiative will have an effect upon the network deployments strategies of operators and countries and it has been drawn up in a climate of uncertainties and delays, the article puts all of this into the context of the current European regulation debate and conducts a technoeconomic analysis to assess the expected impact of the initiative. We have observed a slight shift towards developmental models in the EC regulatory framework. Furthermore, the techno-economic analysis has revealed the limited extent of Community aid and the considerable variability of the equipment deployed and the expenditure involved. We have also highlighted the questionable formulation of the allocation mechanisms, and we have included certain examples or suggestions for optimisation.