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 errorridden
observations of persistent and transitory shocks to profit. We demonstrate that the
model's parameters can be recovered from public observations of sales and survival, and we
estimate them using monthly data from new bars in Texas. We find that entrepreneurs
observe profit's persistent component without error. In this sense, their information is
substantially superior to the public's.