发展中国家实现可持续发展目标面临巨大的资金缺口。发达国家在南北合作框架下向发展中国家提供的融资支持能否成为解决本国劳动力短缺问题的有效途径?本文基于2000—2015年OECD国家与全球106个中低收入国家的双边数据,从债权国国际移民流入视角验证了这一问题。研究发现,国际债务有助于国际移民从债务国流向债权国,这一移民创造效应源于债务国居民收入水平提高、教育服务质量改善以及社会网络关系强化。进一步的研究发现,国际债务有助于债权国从债务国引进国际人才,但是,其在优化债权国国际移民流入技术结构方面并未发挥明显的积极作用。这些结论证实了发达国家向发展中国家提供的债务融资能够实现互利共赢,即在助力发展中国家实现可持续发展目标的同时缓解发达国家技术劳动力短缺问题。

Developing countries are facing a huge financial gap in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Can the international debt provided under the framework of North-South cooperation also help solve the problem of labor shortage in OECD countries? However, the economic impacts of international debt has been less examined in existing literature. And there are even fewer studies conduct the research from the perspective of international migration mobility, making it difficult to provide a clear answer to the above question.
This paper conducts an in-depth investigation of this issue based on bilateral data between OECD countries and 106 low- and middle-income countries from 2000 to 2015. This paper finds that international debt helps promote international migration flow from debtor countries to creditor countries. This migration creation effect comes from the increase of resident income in debtor countries, the improvement of education service quality and the strengthening of bilateral network relations. Further study shows that international debt can assist creditor countries in introducing international talents from debtor countries. However, no significant positive impact has been found in optimizing the immigrants' skilled structure of creditor countries. In addition, under the framework of South-South cooperation, international debt fails to enlarge international immigrants and optimize the immigrants' skilled structure of creditor countries. Various efforts should be made to improve developing countries' appeal to international talents.
Compared with existing literature, the marginal contributions of this paper are as follows. (i) Given the development challenges faced by both sides under the framework of North-South cooperation, this paper systematically investigates how international debt affects the trajectory of international migration from perspectives of migration scale and skilled structure, thus enriching the literature on the economic impacts of international debt. (ii) Given the weak mechanism tests in existing research, this paper conducts the theoretical and empirical analysis of possible mechanisms through which international debt affects international migration mobility. It helps clarify the intrinsic relationship between international debt and international migration mobility. (iii) This paper also compares the different impacts of international debt on “North-South” migration and “South-South” migration. We further focus on international talents who are with better educational backgrounds. It provides references for developing countries to effectively participate in international talent competition.
To conclude, this paper reveals the impacts and mechanisms of international debt on international migration mobility, confirming the viewpoint that debt financing provided by developed countries to developing countries can achieve mutual benefits. Besides, it also has certain policy value for developed countries to effectively attract international talents, address development bottlenecks in developing countries, and enhance the development effectiveness of international debt.