The Changing Structure of Arkansas\u27 Economy: A Shift-Share Analysis

The state of Arkansas enjoys the advantages of its unique central location in the nation, excellent natural surroundings, low cost of living, and one of the best business climates in the southern United States. It is home to several of the largest corporations in the world. Over the period 1980-2000, there was tremendous growth in the state’s economy. However, the growth was confined to specific regions that led to several socio-economic issues adversely affecting the state. To better understand the components and variations in economic growth, a county-wise shift-share analysis was conducted. Employment, a good indicator of economic growth, was used to analyze the changes in the local economic structure of the 75 counties in the state. Findings suggest that while services and retail trade continue to grow, manufacturing and the state/local government continue to be important employers for the state. Farm employment continues to decline, although farm-related manufacturing and services are becoming more important. This report provides a sectoral analysis of employment changes within the counties and is a potential point of reference for both government and industry engaged in community-level policy making and investment

Effective actions at finite temperature

This is a more detailed version of our recent paper where we proposed, from first principles, a direct method for evaluating the exact fermion propagator in the presence of a general background field at finite temperature. This can, in turn, be used to determine the finite temperature effective action for the system. As applications, we discuss the complete one loop finite temperature effective actions for 0+1 dimensional QED as well as for the Schwinger model in detail. These effective actions, which are derived in the real time (closed time path) formalism, generate systematically all the Feynman amplitudes calculated in thermal perturbation theory and also show that the retarded (advanced) amplitudes vanish in these theories. Various other aspects of the problem are also discussed in detail.Comment: 9 pages, revtex, 1 figure, references adde