We study the relationship between exports, employment, and wages in developing countries using both firm and
industry level data. The firm level data shows that on average exporters pay 31 percent higher wages than nonexporters.
The data also reveals that exporting firms are on average much larger. We build a model that allows
us to study the main mechanisms that explain the export premium. These are skilled labor utilization, technology
sophistication, imported input use, and productivity. We find that, conditional on all the mechanisms, the wage export
premium disappears completely. To establish causality we use firm-level panel data from Chile and instrument
variables capturing exogenous export opportunities for firms. The estimations show that conditional on size, firms
that export a higher share of their total sales utilize more skilled (and also highly-skilled) workers, and less unskilled
workers. This implies that exporters need to perform skill intensive activities and tasks. We finally assess the argument
that exporting per se may not necessarily lead to higher skill utilization and what matters is the destination of a firms'
exports. We use a panel of industries and countries to establish whether the destination of a country's exports is
relevant for skill utilization and to take this as evidence of a demand for high quality products in export markets. We
find robust evidence that, worldwide, industries that ship products to high-income destinations do pay higher average
wages. We also find that industries that ship products to high-income destination export higher quality goods and that
the provision of quality is costly and require more intensive use of higher-wage skilled labor.