Abstract: By making use of the data of listed industrial enterprises in China over the period of 2013-2018, this paper studies the relationship between the supply-side structural reform and the micro-enterprise leverage ratio adjustment with the quasi-natural experimental method. The findings show that through improving the corporate profitability, promoting the short-term debt repayment and reducing the willingness of the enterprises to expand, the reform has generally promoted the reduction of the corporate leverage ratio, but this promotion effect is heterogeneous in different years and between different types of firms. Reducing leverage is an important way for the supply-side structural reform to promote the improvement of the total factor productivity of the enterprises, which is more significant among the non-state-owned enterprises, at the regions with better system qualities and among the enterprises with weaker R&D innovation foundations. The above conclusions indicate that in the context of the real economy under greater pressure of growth at present, the supply-side structural reform has to carry out the strategies precisely by integrating the effects of de-leveraging at different types of enterprises, so as to further improve the efficiency of de-leveraging of the structural reform.

Key words: supply-side structural reform, leverage ratio, heterogeneity, quasi-natural experiment