We have determined the strong coupling $\as$ from a comprehensive study of energy-energy correlations ($EEC$) and their asymmetry ($AEEC$) in hadronic decays of $Z~0$ bosons collected by the SLD experiment at SLAC. The data were compared with all four available predictions of QCD calculated up to $\Oa2$ in perturbation theory, and also with a resummed calculation matched to all four of these calculations. We find large discrepancies between $\as$ values extracted from the different $\Oa2$ calculations. We also find a large renormalization scale ambiguity in $\as$ determined from the $EEC$ using the $\Oa2$ calculations; this ambiguity is reduced in the case of the $AEEC$, and is very small when the matched calculations are used. Averaging over all calculations, and over the $EEC$ and $AEEC$ results, we obtain $\asz=0.124~{+0.003}_{-0.004} (exp.) \pm 0.009 (theory).$
Statistical errors only.
Statistical errors only.
ALPHAS from the EEC O(ALPHAS**2) measurement.
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