Under the wave of global leveraging in the post-crisis era, China’s supply-side structural reform is unique all over the world, and it continues to optimize reform measures and achieve a positive effect of deleveraging through multiple measures and coordinated promotion. Based on the regulatory system of SOEs, which is an important aspect of supply-side structural reform, using the data of industrial enterprises from 1998 to 2013, this paper takes the change of affiliation as the representation of the authorization of the regulatory system of SOEs, combines the theoretical analysis on the basis of enterprise organizational structure model with the econometric analysis based on panel data, and discusses the deleveraging effect of supply-side structural reform from the perspective of the regulatory system of SOEs.

The results show that: As a whole, there is a negative correlation between the authorization of the regulatory system characterized by the change of affiliation and the leverage ratio of SOEs, which not only passes the robustness tests of core explanatory variable substitution, fixed-effect adjustment, sample adjustment, possible policy shock control, and control variable correlation, but also passes the endogeneity tests of instrumental variable method and quasi-natural experiment centered on the centralized reform of the regulatory system of SOEs in 2003.

Further mechanism test shows that: The above relationship stems from the positive impact of regulatory authorization on the micro-organizational structure represented by the decentralization of internal decision-making. That is, regulatory authorization triggers the deleveraging process of SOEs by expanding the decentralization of internal decision-making. Quantitative analysis on the basis of mediating effect model shows that the above-mentioned mediating effect explains the leverage ratio of SOEs by more than 30%. The heterogeneity test shows that monetary policy, internal vertical communication costs and target consistency between superiors and subordinates all play a significant role in the deleveraging effect. Loose monetary policy and low internal vertical communication costs will weaken the deleveraging effect, the stabilization of growth pressure faced by SOEs under the government will strengthen the deleveraging effect, and the role of financing constraints and corporate efficiency is neither stable nor significant.

Accordingly, while using supply-side structural reform to manage the economic leverage process, it is necessary to not only take multiple measures at the macro level to continuously optimize specific reform policies, but also monitor the changes of micro-organizational structure that may be triggered by the reform from the micro level, gradually improve and form an overall framework for the supply-side structural reform, and deepen the reform of the regulatory system of SOEs. At the same time, macro polices should take the trade-off between growth stabilization and risk prevention as the constraint, and should not ignore the government organizational structure, so as to achieve the uniformity and precision of macro polices.