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In Australia, pay awards by government tribunals cover nearly the entire work force, and those awards set equal pay for comparable union and nonunion workers. Union members may, however, secure higher compensation through plant-level bargaining. This study uses 1984–88 panel data to estimate the magnitude of union effects on compensation by examining changes in the compensation of employees who enter and leave union jobs, relative to changes in the compensation of workers who remain union or nonunion. The results show that union workers in Australia enjoy 7–18% higher wages than comparable nonunion workers and are also more likely to have access to a pension plan.

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Infrastructure provides critical support for economic activity, and assessing its role requires reliable measures. This paper provides an overview of U.S. infrastructure data in the National Economic Accounts. After developing definitions of basic, social, and digital infrastructure, we assess trends in each of these categories and their components. Results are mixed depending on the category. Investment in some important types of basic infrastructure has barely or not kept up with depreciation and population growth in recent decades, while some other categories look better. We also show that the average age of most types of infrastructure in the U.S. has been rising, and the remaining service life has been falling. This paper also presents new prototype estimates of state-level investment in highways, highlighting the wide variation across states. In addition, we present new prototype data on maintenance expenditures for highways. In terms of future research, we believe that deprecation rates warrant additional attention given that current estimates are based on 40-year old research and are well below those used in Canada and other countries. We also believe that additional creative work on price indexes for infrastructure would be valuable. Finally, all of the data in this paper are downloadable, and we hope that the analysis in this paper and the availability of data will spur additional research. 'Basic' Infrastructure In Digital Infrastructure (e.g. communication-and cloud related) Social Infrastructure (e.g. schools and hospitals)

High power and high energy density are important requirements for advanced energy storage systems in mobile electronic devices, electric vehicles, and military-grade high-rate energy storage systems.