Research On The Boosting Effect Of Digital Finance On The Structural De-leverage Of Enterprises

Since the outbreak of the global financial crisis,phenomena such as excessive corporate leverage,rapid growth,and debt crises and market turbulence caused by structural imbalances have attracted widespread attention from society and academia.Therefore,the policy level has taken a series of measures to address the issue of leverage,shifting from "one size fits all" deleveraging to corporate sector deleveraging,and then transitioning to corporate structural deleveraging.During the "14th Five Year Plan" period,with the rapid development of a new round of technological revolution,digital finance,as a powerful complement to traditional financial institutions,has the advantages of "wide coverage,low cost,and high efficiency",providing new opportunities for corporate structural deleveraging.Based on existing research on digital finance and corporate deleveraging,it is found that although digital finance provides new opportunities for corporate structural deleveraging,existing research only uses corporate leverage as a measure of corporate structural deleveraging,and fails to rigorously clarify the theoretical mechanism of structural imbalances in corporate leverage.Therefore,this article selects the data of Ashare listed companies in China’s Shenzhen and Shanghai stock exchanges from 2011 to2020,and matches them with the digital inclusive financial index at the prefecture level to analyze the boosting effect and mechanism of digital finance on corporate structural deleveraging.The research contents are as follows:(1)To investigate the impact of digital finance on the overall leverage level of enterprises based on the structural differences in leverage ratios between different sectors.(2)Based on the structural differences in the types of internal debt of enterprises,this paper examines the structural impact of digital finance on long-term and short-term leverage ratios of enterprises.(3)Considering the structural differences in leverage ratios between enterprises,this paper examines the boosting effect of digital finance on corporate structural deleveraging from the perspectives of ownership nature,scale,and profitability.(4)From the perspective of financial mismatch,this paper reveals the mechanism of digital finance’s role in corporate structural deleveraging.Through the above research,the main conclusions are as follows:(1)The correlation coefficient between digital finance and the total leverage ratio of enterprises is significantly negative,that is,the development of digital finance can effectively reduce the level of leverage ratio of enterprises.This conclusion remains robust after using the two-stage least squares method to alleviate endogenous problems.At the same time,the research results indicate that there are structural differences in the impact of digital finance on corporate leverage.Its coverage and depth of use can effectively reduce corporate leverage,while the degree of digitization is not related to corporate leverage.(2)In the context of the differentiation of leverage ratios in the non-financial enterprise sector,there are significant differences in the effect of digital finance on corporate leverage ratios within and between micro enterprises.Specifically,digital finance can effectively reduce the short-term leverage ratio of enterprises,the leverage ratio of large state-owned enterprises,and the leverage ratio of low profitability enterprises,thereby boosting the structural deleveraging of enterprises.(3)Further mechanism analysis shows that the development of regional digital finance can correct financial mismatches,optimize the allocation of credit resources,and reasonably guide the transfer of credit resources to high-quality enterprises,thereby more targeted support for corporate structural deleveraging.Based on the above research conclusions,three countermeasures are proposed: first,continue to promote the development of digital inclusive finance and deepen the structural reform of the financial supply side;Second,avoid "one size fits all" deleveraging policies and achieve accurate docking between digital finance and enterprises;Thirdly,traditional financial institutions should achieve digital transformation and improve the allocation efficiency of financial resources.