vorgelegt von

First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor and co-author Prof. Kai Carstensen for his continuous advice and encouragement while writing the thesis. I learned a lot from him during numerous conversations about my research and I benefited very much from the joint work on price setting behavior and inflation dynamics in Germany. I am also thankful for the opportunity to partly work at the Department of Business Cycle Analysis and Surveys at the Ifo Institute providing an outstanding research environment. Furthermore, I would like to thank Prof. Gerhard Illing who kindly agreed to act as my second supervisor. I very much appreciated his helpful comments during research seminars. I also thank Prof. Gernot Müller from University of Bonn, whom I was happy to win as my third examiner. I am grateful to Prof. Ken Coutts, who invited me to University of Cambridge for a research stay; I am thankful not only for his helpful comments about my work but also for his kind hospitality. I also thank the Economics department and Selwyn College for their hospitality during my stay. Moreover, I would like to thank my co-author Sebas