We use linked employer-employee data from Italy to explore the relationship between exports and wages. Exploiting the 1992 devaluation of the lira, we show that exporting firms both pay a wage premium above what their workers would earn in the outside labor market (the “rent-sharing” effect) and employ workers whose skills command a higher price after the devaluation (the “skill composition” effect). The latter only emerges once we allow for the value of workers’ skills to differ in the pre- and post-devaluation periods. We also document that the export wage premium is larger for workers with more export-related experience.

We conducted a randomized survey with 2,666 US residents to study preferences for legalizing payments to kidney donors. We found strong polarization, with many participants supporting or opposing payments regardless of potential transplant gains. However, about 18 percent of respondents would switch to favoring payments for sufficiently large increases in transplants. Preferences for compensation have strong moral foundations; participants especially reject direct payments by patients, which they find would violate principles of fairness. We corroborate the interpretation of our findings with a choice experiment of a costly decision to donate money to a foundation that supports donor compensation. (JEL D63, D64, I11)