Modelling interregional migration flows by the cellular automata

The article dwells upon investigating the issue of the most adequate tools developing and justifying to forecast the interregional migration flows value and structure. Migration processes have a significant impact on the size and demographic structure of the population of territories, the state and balance of regional and local labor markets.
To analyze the migration processes and to assess their impact an economic-mathematical tool is required which would be instrumental in modelling the migration processes and flows for different areas with the desired precision. The current methods and approaches to the migration processes modelling, including the analysis of their advantages and disadvantages, were considered. It is noted that to implement many of these methods mass aggregated statistical data is required which is not always available and doesn't characterize the migrants behavior at the local level where the decision to move to a new dwelling place is made. This has a significant impact on the ability to apply appropriate migration processes modelling techniques and on the projection accuracy of the migration flows magnitude and structure.
The cellular automata model for interregional migration flows modelling, implementing the integration of the households migration behavior model under the conditions of the Bounded Rationality into the general model of the area migration flow was developed and tested based on the Primorye Territory data. To implement the households migration behavior model under the conditions of the Bounded Rationality the integral attractiveness index of the regions with economic, social and ecological components was proposed in the work.
To evaluate the prognostic capacity of the developed model, it was compared with the available cellular automata models used to predict interregional migration flows. The out of sample prediction method which showed statistically significant superiority of the proposed model was applied for this purpose. The model allows obtaining the forecasts and quantitative characteristics of the areas migration flows based on the households real migration behaviour at the local level taking into consideration their living conditions and behavioural motives.