vorgelegt von

First and foremost I would like to thank Peter Egger and Theo Eicher for agree-ing to supervise my thesis and their support. I am deeply indebted to Theo Eicher for his ongoing guidance, countless discussions, inspiration and patience throughout this venture. Our close and productive collaboration is reflected in his co-authorship of chapter 1 and 3 of this dissertation. I am equally grateful to Chris Papageorgiou, also co-author of chapter 1, for fruitful discussions and the pleasure I had working with him and Theo Eicher. Grateful acknowledgements are made to the Ifo Institute for Economic Research and in particular the Department of International Institutional Comparisons for providing me with an excellent research environment and all neces-sary resources. Special thanks go to Rigmar Osterkamp and Wolfgang Ochel for cre-ating an inspiring and pleasant work atmosphere and for giving me the freedom to finish my thesis during the last months. I greatly benefited from my research stay at the University of Washington during the spring of 2007, where much of the research for chapter 2 was conducted, and I would like to express my thanks to the whole De-partment of Economics for their hospitality and especially Theo Eicher for the invita