我国企业面临着既要降低债务以实现“去杠杆”的风险释放目的,又要合理利用杠杆以完成“企业升级”目标的两难选择。在此背景下,本文试图探明杠杆率对企业升级的影响和作用渠道,并进一步剖析“去杠杆”压力。在此基础上,选取2010—2019年我国A股制造业上市公司的数据进行实证检验。结果表明,杠杆率通过企业创新能力、运营效率和风险承担渠道对企业升级形成“倒U形”的影响,即存在适度则促进的“垫脚石作用”和过度则抑制的“绊脚石效应”,且这种关系并不存在明显的企业和杠杆结构异质性的差异。与此同时,“去杠杆”压力结果表明,目前我国大多数制造业上市公司还具有加杠杆空间,进而赋能企业升级。然而,也有小部分企业杠杆率高企,去杠杆压力凸显。其中,国有企业的“去杠杆”压力明显大于民营企业,企业的长期债务和商业信用借款的“去杠杆”压力明显小于短期债务和银行借贷。因此,应积极落实国家“去杠杆”政策,并根据企业特征和杠杆结构的类型实施差异化监管策略,从而更好地发挥杠杆对企业升级的驱动作用。

Chinese enterprises are faced with the dilemma of reducing debt to achieve the goal of deleveraging and using leverage reasonably to achieve the goal of “enterprise upgrading”. In this context, this paper attempts to explore the relationship and mechanism of leverage on enterprise upgrading, and further analyze the deleveraging pressure. On this basis, this paper selects the data of China's A-share manufacturing listed companies from 2010 to 2019 to conduct an empirical test. The results show that leverage ratio has an inverted U-shaped influence on enterprise upgrading through innovation ability, operation efficiency and risk-taking channels, that is, there is a “stepping stone effect” of moderate promotion and a “stumbling block effect” of excessive inhibition, and there is no obvious difference between enterprises and leverage structure heterogeneity. At the same time, the result of deleveraging pressure shows that most of the manufacturing listed companies in China still have room to increase leverage, thus enabling enterprises to upgrade. However, there are also a small number of enterprises with high leverage ratio, and the pressure of deleveraging is prominent; among them, the deleveraging pressure of state-owned enterprises is significantly greater than that of private enterprises, and the deleveraging pressure of long-term debt and commercial credit loans of enterprises is significantly less than that of short-term debt and bank loans. Therefore, we should actively implement the national deleveraging policy, and implement differentiated regulatory strategies according to the characteristics of enterprises and the types of leverage structure, so as to better play the driving role of leverage in the upgrading of enterprises.