| The 2022 Government Work Report stressed that supply-side structural reform should be prioritized to promote high-quality economic development.Since the launch of supply-side structural reform in 2015,the core objectives of supply-side structural reform have gone from completing the tasks of cutting overcapacity,destocking,deleveraging,reducing costs and replenishing areas of weakness to taking into account the dual objectives of "preventing risks" and "maintaining steady growth" to promote high-quality economic development.The change of policy reflects the increasing perfection of the financial policy system and mechanism in the process of deepening the supply-side structural reform.To realize the goals of the 14 th Five-Year Plan and the long-term goals for 2035,we need to deepen and implement supply-side structural reform of the financial sector on the basis of a scientific understanding of market rules,optimize the efficiency of financial support for the real economy,and ensure sustained,sound,steady and high-quality economic development.The deleveraging policy,as a key measure in the process of deepening the structural reform of the financial supply side,aims to remove the unreasonable liabilities of economic entities,optimize the efficiency of financial resource allocation,and defuse the financial risks caused by high debt.How effective the deleveraging policy is in supporting the high-quality development of the real economy,what new situations and problems have emerged in the process of promoting the policy,and where should precise policies be implemented in the formulation of the next financial policy? These questions need to be scientifically judged and provided with realistic evidence.This paper carries out a systematic analysis on the effect of deleveraging policy.Under the pressure of deleveraging policy,enterprises can meet the policy requirements by reducing "incremental" debt and "stock" debt.Among them,enterprises deleveraging by reducing new debt and increasing equity is the "incremental" choice of financing decisions;And through the way of leverage manipulation to hide debt and reduce the book leverage ratio is the "stock" adjustment of corporate financing structure.Therefore,this paper explores the specific path of deleveraging from the perspective of "incremental" selection and "stock" adjustment of corporate financing decisions,and answers the question of how to deleverage when enterprises face deleveraging policy pressure.At the same time,it is very important to explore the support efficiency of the deleveraging policy to the development of the real economy.As the core driving force to maintain economic growth,investment decisions of enterprises include capital investment and innovation investment.Among them,capital investment activities are the engine of sustainable growth and development of enterprises,and innovation investment activities are the key to enhance the competitiveness of enterprises and improve the quality and efficiency of the economy.Therefore,this paper further analyzes the effect of deleveraging policy on enterprise capital investment and innovation investment,and identifies the real economic effect of deleveraging policy to eliminate unreasonable debt.According to the research theme of this paper,based on the sample data of listed companies in China’s A-share non-financial industry from 2007 to 2020,the research is planned to follow the main line of "theoretical basis — characteristic facts —hypothesis proposal — empirical test — conclusion and enlightenment",from normative research to empirical research,from general law to heterogeneous scenario analysis.This paper explores and interprets the research theme of deleveraging policy effect from various angles.The research content and main conclusions of this paper are as follows:First,based on the implementation background of supply-side structural reform deleveraging policy and the current situation of high corporate leverage,the financial logic of deleveraging policy is clarified,and the decision-making mechanism of economic entities before and after the implementation of the policy is clarified.The characteristic fact results show that after the 2008 financial crisis,China’s non-financial enterprise sector entered a leverage cycle.Within 6 years,the leverage ratio of nonfinancial enterprise sector increased by 47.3 percentage points.After the deleveraging policy was implemented in 2015,the leverage ratio of the non-financial corporate sector decreased significantly.The results of differentiating the quantile characteristics of corporate debt show that highly leveraged enterprises show the characteristics of increasing leverage after the financial crisis,and show obvious deleveraging policy effect after the implementation of deleveraging policy,while the leverage ratio of lowleveraged enterprises has no significant downward trend after the deleveraging policy.In 2020,9.41% of China’s listed companies still had a debt ratio higher than the international warning line of 70%,among which 15.80% of state-owned enterprises had a debt ratio higher than the warning line,which indicates that there is still room for structural deleveraging policy.Moreover,the adjustment of leverage ratio of stateowned enterprises and non-state-owned enterprises shows obvious structural characteristics.After the outbreak of the financial crisis,state-owned enterprises showed an obvious trend of increasing leverage,while non-state-owned enterprises showed a deleveraging trend deviating from the macro leverage ratio.After the implementation of the deleveraging policy,SOEs bear more policy pressure,and the deleveraging trend is more obvious.However,the leverage ratio of SOEs tends to be stable since the third year of the implementation of the policy.Second,based on the DID model,it explores how highly leveraged enterprises reduce leverage ratio by adjusting equity financing and debt financing decisions after the implementation of deleveraging policy,and answers the question of how enterprises choose "incremental" financing under the pressure of deleveraging policy.It is found that after the implementation of deleveraging policy,compared with low-leverage enterprises,the new debt financing of high-leverage enterprises is significantly reduced,and the tendency of new equity financing of enterprises is enhanced.This indicates that the deleveraging policy has not only reduced the risk of high corporate debt,but also increased the proportion of direct financing of enterprises and activated the vitality of the capital market.It is found that under the policy pressure of deleveraging,enterprises have obvious tendency to "reduce short debt" and "reduce long debt".In terms of decision-making,enterprises mainly issue new shares to expand the scale of assets and reduce the leverage ratio.Furthermore,the heterogeneity test results based on deleveraging policy pressure show that although SOEs bear more deleveraging policy tasks and deleveraging pressure,the tendency of new equity financing and debt financing reduction is significantly weaker than that of non-SOEs.However,overindebted enterprises with greater deleveraging policy pressure tend to "reduce debt" and "increase power" significantly higher than non-over-indebted enterprises.Based on the heterogeneity analysis of enterprise growth characteristics,it is found that highgrowth enterprises prefer to achieve deleveraging in the way of "increasing rights",especially in the way of "increasing rights" by issuing new shares,while low-growth enterprises tend to "reduce short debt" and "reduce long debt" more obviously than high-growth enterprises.The results of the test of economic consequences show that under the pressure of deleveraging policy,enterprises can reduce default risk and guarantee normal production and operation activities of enterprises only by taking the way of "increasing the weight" to deleverage,and restrain the financial risks of enterprises.However,enterprises can increase their financial risks by taking the way of "reducing debt" to deleverage.Third,from the perspective of corporate leverage manipulation,it discusses the "stock" adjustment of corporate financing structure under the pressure of deleveraging policy,and tests the effectiveness of deleveraging policy.It is found that after the implementation of deleveraging policy,highly leveraged enterprises reduce their book leverage ratio by hiding their debts.Deleveraging policy has effectively reduced the corporate debt ratio,but it has triggered serious leverage manipulation,showing the policy effect of "pressing the gourd to float the gourd".Further research shows that the heterogeneity of enterprises will affect the motivation of leverage manipulation,and the greater the deleveraging pressure and the higher the growth of enterprises,the stronger the motivation of leverage manipulation.On the other hand,the market supervision mechanism,such as the attention of analysts and the shareholding of institutional investors,can significantly restrain the leverage manipulation behavior of enterprises and exert good external governance effect.The results of the economic consequences test show that although the reduction of the book leverage ratio by hiding the debt meets the requirements of the policy layer,it also increases the possibility of the enterprise falling into financial distress,which lays hidden risks for the high-quality economic development.Fourth,it studies the effect of deleveraging policy on enterprises’ capital investment decisions,and indirectly tests the effect of supply-side structural reform in optimizing resource allocation.It is found that deleveraging policy significantly reduces the level of new capital investment of enterprises,but improves the investment efficiency of enterprises,which is mainly manifested in restraining the tendency of enterprises to over-invest.Further heterogeneity analysis results show that non-stateowned enterprises,over-indebted enterprises,high-growth enterprises and growingstage enterprises all realize the optimization of investment efficiency after the implementation of deleveraging policy.Finally,the moderating effects of different deleveraging methods on the deleveraging policy effect of enterprises are investigated.It is found that,although the deleveraging behavior of enterprises can optimize the investment efficiency on the whole,the "increasing weight" behavior of enterprises will increase the tendency of overinvestment,and the "reducing debt" behavior will aggravate the degree of underinvestment of enterprises.Fifthly,it examines the effect of deleveraging policy on innovation investment activities of enterprises,and identifies the internal conditions for deleveraging policy to promote innovation investment decisions of enterprises.It is found that the deleveraging policy can improve the level of innovation input and innovation output of enterprises by eliminating ineffective debt,showing obvious innovation promotion effect.Moreover,the innovation and development effect brought by the deleveraging policy is still significant in 2020,indicating that the deleveraging policy has achieved long-term real economic effect by eliminating ineffective debts.Heterogeneity test results show that the innovation promotion effect brought by deleveraging policy does not exist significantly in all enterprises.The evidence based on enterprise ownership shows that after the implementation of deleveraging policy,both state-owned and nonstate-owned highly leveraged enterprises have increased their innovation input,but only the level of innovation output of state-owned enterprises has increased significantly.Based on the characteristics of corporate debt,it is found that the change of innovation activities of non-over-indebted enterprises is more obvious after the implementation of deleveraging policy.The results based on the characteristics of enterprise growth show that both high growth enterprises and low growth enterprises improve the innovation level of enterprises due to the efficiency optimization brought by deleveraging policy.The research based on the life cycle characteristics of enterprises shows that after the deleveraging policy is implemented,the R&D input and output of mature enterprises are improved,while the growth enterprises only achieve the effect of increasing innovation input.Further exploring the difference of the effect of enterprises’ deleveraging mode choice on innovation level,it is found that the deleveraging mode of "increasing weight" can enhance the promoting effect of deleveraging policy on innovation,while the deleveraging mode of "reducing debt" or leverage manipulation weakens the promoting effect of deleveraging policy on innovation.Finally,based on the above research conclusions,the paper puts forward targeted policy suggestions on how to optimize the efficiency of financial policies in serving the real economy at the stage of high-quality development.Supply-side structural reform is bound to be a difficult and lengthy process.In the face of new problems in the stage of economic development,we must constantly seek new changes and achieve accurate and effective regulation of economic operation,which is the key to the real high-quality development of the Chinese economy.This paper believes that the deleveraging policy of supply-side structural reform can reduce the leverage ratio of enterprises and effectively defuse financial risks.However,there is still some policy space to optimize the efficiency of deleveraging policy to serve high-quality economic development in the process of deepening supply-side structural reform.On the one hand,strengthening the supervision of enterprise credit behavior,at the same time,accurately implementing policy support for key industries and high-growth enterprises,and giving play to the governance effect of market mechanism are important levers to achieve the goal of deleveraging policy of "stability with reduction" at the current stage.In deepening the supply side,on the other hand,the process of structural reform,should actively consolidating previous policy,improve the operating conditions of real time monitoring of the enterprise,with monetary and fiscal policy a number of policy linkage,precise Shi Ce,at the same time improve the capital market system construction,optimize the efficiency of financial services in the real economy,finally realizes "the risk prevention" and "steady growth " dual goal,We will promote steady and long-term growth of the Chinese economy. |
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