Foreword: Special Issue on Opportunities and Challenges Facing the Rural Creative Economy

Community/Rural/Urban Development,

INDUSTRY AGGLOMERATION AND INVESTMENT IN RURAL BUSINESSES

This paper examines the effects of local industry agglomeration on the investments in equipment and machinery made between 1995 and 1999 by rural Maine businesses. Empirical results indicate that industry agglomeration, measured at the county-industry and municipality-industry levels, has a positive effect on an existing establishment's probability of investment and the amount invested per worker.Community/Rural/Urban Development,

THE EFFECTS OF LOCAL TAXES AND SPENDING ON BUSINESS STARTUPS

This paper examines the effects of local taxes and government spending on new business startups in 8,576 Maine city-industries between 1993 and 1994. Empirical findings indicate that local property tax rates have a negative effect on the number of startups, whereas spending on education and total local government spending on public services have a positive effect on new business activity.Community/Rural/Urban Development,

Antipoverty Effects of Unemployment Insurance

[Excerpt] This report examines the antipoverty effects of unemployment insurance benefits over the past recession and through the beginning of the economic recovery. The analysis highlights the impact of the additional and expanded unemployment insurance (UI) benefits available to unemployed workers through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA, RL. 111-5) and the Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC08) program (Title IV of RL. 110-252). In 2009, approximately 62% of all unemployed individuals were receiving UI benefits and thus were directly impacted by legislative changes to the UI system

When CoGeNT met PAMELA

If the excess events from the CoGeNT experiment arise from elastic scatterings of a light dark matter off the nuclei, crossing symmetry implies non-vanishing annihilation cross-sections of the light dark matter into hadronic final states inside the galactic halo, which we confront with the anti-proton spectrum measured by the PAMELA collaboration. We consider two types of effective interactions between the dark matter and the quarks: 1) contact interactions from integrating out heavy particles and 2) long-range interactions due to the electromagnetic properties of the dark matter. The lack of excess in the anti-proton spectrum results in tensions for a scalar and, to a less extent, a vector dark matter interacting with the quarks through the Higgs portal.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figures. Updated references and included effects of solar modulatio

The Effects of Workforce Creativity on Earnings in U.S. Counties

This paper examines the effects of local workforce creativity on county-level earnings. Descriptive analysis of the data shows that most of the high-creativity counties in the United States are part of metropolitan areas, and that employee earnings are high in these places. Regression results indicate that, other things being equal, workforce creativity enhances county-level labor earnings. However, the returns to creativity that we found can be confirmed only in the urban context. An extension of the analysis suggests that the creative workforce wage premium may be capturing the effects of "technical workforce creativity" on earnings.creative economy, wages, economic development, Labor and Human Capital,

Gamma-ray lines and One-Loop Continuum from s-channel Dark Matter Annihilations

The era of indirect detection searches for dark matter has begun, with the sensitivities of gamma-ray detectors now approaching the parameter space relevant for weakly interacting massive particles. In particular, gamma ray lines would be smoking gun signatures of dark matter annihilation, although they are typically suppressed compared to the continuum. In this paper, we pay particular attention to the 1-loop continuum generated together with the gamma-ray lines and investigate under which conditions a dark matter model can naturally lead to a line signal that is relatively enhanced. We study generic classes of models in which DM is a fermion that annihilates through an s-channel mediator which is either a vector or scalar and identify the coupling and mass conditions under which large line signals occur. We focus on the "forbidden channel mechanism" advocated a few years ago in the "Higgs in space" scenario for which tree level annihilation is kinematically forbidden today. Detailed calculations of all 1-loop annihilation channels are provided. We single out very simple models with a large line over continuum ratio and present general predictions for a large range of WIMP masses that are relevant not only for Fermi and Hess II but also for the next generation of telescopes such as CTA and Gamma-400. Constraints from the relic abundance, direct detection and collider bounds are also discussed.Comment: 32 pages, 13 figures; v2: minor clarifications, summary paragraph added; v3: matches published version, minor clarifications, results unchange

Have We Observed the Higgs (Imposter)?

We interpret the new particle at the Large Hadron Collider as a CP-even scalar and investigate its electroweak quantum number. Assuming an unbroken custodial invariance as suggested by precision electroweak measurements, only four possibilities are allowed if the scalar decays to pairs of gauge bosons, as exemplified by a dilaton/radion, a non-dilatonic electroweak singlet scalar, an electroweak doublet scalar, and electroweak triplet scalars. We show that current LHC data already strongly disfavor both the dilatonic and non-dilatonic singlet imposters. On the other hand, a generic Higgs doublet give excellent fits to the measured event rates of the newly observed scalar resonance, while the Standard Model Higgs boson gives a slightly worse overall fit due to the lack signal in the tau tau channel. The triplet imposter exhibits some tension with the data. The global fit indicates the enhancement in the diphoton channel could be attributed to an enhanced partial decay width, while the production rates are consistent with the Standard Model expectations. We emphasize that more precise measurements of the ratio of event rates in the WW over ZZ channels, as well as the event rates in b bbar and tau tau channels, are needed to further distinguish the Higgs doublet from the triplet imposter.Comment: 20 pages, 4 figures; v2: updated with most recent public data as of August 7. A generic Higgs doublet now gives the best fit to data, while the triplet imposter exhibits some tensio

The Deuterium to Hydrogen Abundance Ratio Towards the QSO SDSS1558-0031

We present a measurement of the D/H abundance ratio in a metal-poor damped Lyman alpha (DLA) system along the sightline of QSO SDSS1558-0031. The DLA system is at redshift z = 2.70262, has a neutral column density of log(NHI)=20.67+/-0.05 cm^2, and a gas-phase metallicity [O/H]= -1.49 which indicates that deuterium astration is negligible. Deuterium absorption is observed in multiple Lyman series with a column density of log(NDI)=16.19+/-0.04 cm^2, best constrained by the deuterium Lyman-11 line. We measure log(D/H) = -4.48+/-0.06, which when combined with previous measurements along QSO sightlines gives a best estimate of log(D/H) = -4.55+/-0.04, where the 1-sigma error estimate comes from a jackknife analysis of the weighted means. Using the framework of standard big bang nucleosynthesis, this value of D/H translates into a baryon density of Omega_b h^2 = 0.0213 +/- 0.0013 +/- 0.0004 where the error terms represent the 1-sigma errors from D/H and the uncertainties in the nuclear reaction rates respectively. Combining our new measurement with previous measurements of D/H, we no longer find compelling evidence for a trend of D/H with NHI.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures, 1 table. Accepted to the Astrophysical Journal Letter