上世纪90年代末的国企改革导致近3000万职工下岗，此后中国民营经济快速发展，但缺少研究考察下岗职工在其中的角色。本文利用事前信息构造潜在下岗变量，使用双重差分模型识别下岗潮对市场主体创立和成长质量的影响。研究发现，与下岗人数较少城市相比，在下岗人数较多的城市，1997年之后成立了更多民营企业和个体户。同时期发生的如1998年亚洲金融危机、中国入世、大规模基建投资等事件，不能解释该结果。进一步的结果显示：1）新成立的制造业企业劳动密集程度更高；2）样本期间市场主体整体存活率较低，但在下岗人数更多的城市，新增市场主体存活率更高，存活企业创造了更多就业，更可能成为超大型企业；3）与普通下岗职工相比，国企高管更可能创立民营企业，并雇用下岗职工，国企释放的劳动力部分在民营部门再组合。本文为国企改革促进民营经济发展提供了证据，并为理解中国经济的市场化转型提供了新视角。

The SOE reform in the late-1990s led to the massive layoffs of nearly 30 million workers, and since then China private sector has grown rapidly. However, there is a lack of research investigating the role of laid-off workers in it. By employing a variant of pre-reform potential layoffs across cities, this paper uses the difference-in-differences method to explore the impact of the massive layoffs resulting from a SOE reform in China on business formation and long-term entrepreneurial qualities. The difference-in-differences estimator shows that after 1997, in cities with massive potential layoffs, there was an increase in the establishment of both privately owned and self-employed businesses. An increase of 10,000 laid-off workers resulted in 147 entrants of business in the private sector. Other events in the same period, such as the Asian financial crisis, WTO accession, SOE privatization and investment policy on infrastructure, could not explain the results. Further results showed that: 1) Newly formed manufacturing firms are more labor-intensive; 2) In the long run, the SOE reform resulted in higher survival rates for new entrants, greater likelihood of job creation by the survivors, and greater potential for survivors to become regional leaders in terms of employment size; 3) Top executives who quit from SOEs are more likely to be entrepreneurs than general laid-off workers, and the firms created by the former tend to employ more of the latter. The results demonstrate that the human capitals shed from the SOE sector and COE sector have been partially reallocated and reintegrated into the private sector, paving the way for a more robust and supportive labor market in the business landscape.