Markups vary systematically across firms and are a source of misallocation. This paper develops a tractable model of firm dynamics where firms' market power is endogenous and the distribution of markups emerges as an equilibrium outcome. Monopoly power is the result of a process of forward‐looking, risky accumulation: firms invest in productivity growth to increase markups in their existing products but are stochastically replaced by more efficient competitors. Creative destruction therefore has pro‐competitive effects because faster churn gives firms less time to accumulate market power. In an application to firm‐level data from Indonesia, the model predicts that, relative to the United States, misallocation is more severe and firms are substantially smaller. To explain these patterns, the model suggests an important role for frictions that prevent existing firms from entering new markets. Differences in entry costs for new firms are less important.

This paper studies premarital parental investments in children’s wealth, where spousal wealth is a public good in marriage. By investing in their children’s wealth, parents increase the wealth of their children and the quality of the spouses that their children can marry. In large marriage markets, the hedonic return to investment internalizes all the external benefits of premarital investment in wealth so that the competitive equilibrium is efficient. Marriage market competition also increases investments in small marriage markets relative to no competition, but equilibrium investments are not efficient.

Structural transformation in most currently developing countries takes the form of a rapid rise in services but limited industrialization. In this paper, we propose a new methodology to structurally estimate productivity growth in service industries that circumvents the notorious difficulties in measuring quality improvements. In our theory, the expansion of the service sector is both a consequence—due to income effects—and a cause—due to productivity growth—of the development process. We estimate the model using Indian household data. We find that productivity growth in nontradable consumer services such as retail, restaurants, or residential real estate was an important driver of structural transformation and rising living standards between 1987 and 2011. However, the welfare gains were heavily skewed toward high‐income urban dwellers.