ECONOMETRIC MODELLING OF MIGRATION FLOWS

Methodological and empirical literature offers several possibilities how to model migration flows. The main goal of this paper is to compare two different specifications of spatial econometric models of migration flows (spatial error model and first-order spatial autoregressive model) employing three different ways of handling the intraregional flows (setting them to zero; eliminating them; adding a separate intercept term for these observations as well as a set of explanatory variables). Our empirical analysis is based on internal migration flows among the Slovak districts (territorial level LAU-1) using 2009-2013 data. The results suggest that different models offer similar estimates, however few differences can be observed.