We present a structural model of firm growth, learning, and survival and consider its identification and estimation. In the model, entrepreneurs have private and possibly error-ridden observations of persistent and transitory shocks to profit. We demonstrate that the model's parameters can be...

This paper develops an econometric model of firm entry, competition, and exit in oligopolistic markets. The model has an essentially unique symmetric Markov-perfect equilibrium, which can be computed very quickly. We show that its primitives are identified from market-level data on the number of...

This paper extends the static analysis of oligopoly structure into an infinite-horizon setting with sunk costs and demand uncertainty. The observation that exit rates decline with firm age motivates the assumption of last-in first-out dynamics: An entrant expects to produce no longer than any...

This paper determines the structural shocks that shape a firm's first year by estimating a structural model of firm growth, learning, and survival using monthly sales histories from 305 Texas bars. We find that heterogeneity in firms' pre-entry scale decisions accounts for about 40% of their...

This article uses a panel of Texas restaurants' and bars' alcohol to measure the pace of creative destruction--the ongoing replacement of unproductive competitors with the new firms--and it investigates whether producers in more concentrated markets might use their market power to stabilize the...