We test the recently introduced radiation model against the gravity model for
the system composed of England and Wales, both for commuting patterns and for
public transportation flows. The analysis is performed both at macroscopic
scales, i.e. at the national scale, and at microscopic scales, i.e. at the city
level. It is shown that the thermodynamic limit assumption for the original
radiation model significantly underestimates the commuting flows for large
cities. We then generalize the radiation model, introducing the correct
normalisation factor for finite systems. We show that even if the gravity model
has a better overall performance the parameter-free radiation model gives
competitive results, especially for large scales.Comment: in press Phys. Rev. E, 201
