“…Let ϕ : R n × [0, ∞) → [0, ∞) be a growth function, namely, ϕ(x, ·) is an Orlicz function of upper type 1 and lower type p ∈ (0, 1], and ϕ(·, t) belongs to A loc ∞ (R n ) (see Definition 2.5 below). Motivated by [35,51,64], in this paper, we introduce a new local Musielak-Orlicz Hardy space, h ϕ (R n ), via the local grand maximal function and the local BMO-type space, bmo ϕ (R n ), which is further proved to be the dual space of h ϕ (R n ). As an interesting application, we show that the class of pointwise multipliers for bmo φ (R n ), characterized by Nakai and Yabuta in [45], is the dual of L 1 (R n ) + h Φ0 (R n ), where φ is an increasing function on (0, ∞) satisfying some additional growth conditions (see Theorem 7.9 and Remark 7.10 below), bmo φ (R n ) denotes the local BMO-type space introduced by Nakai and Yabuta in [45], and Φ 0 is a Musielak-Orlicz function induced by φ. Characterizations of h ϕ (R n ), including the atoms, the local vertical and the local nontangential maximal functions, are presented.…”