The three essays of this dissertation contribute to the measurement of European economic integration and investigate the welfare effects of the European countries. The first study presents a newly developed index – the EU Index – which measures the extent of economic integration into the...

This thesis is concerned with the effects of inflation on output growth and on its determinants. In the first step, ourstudy analyzes two aspects of the inflation–growth relationship. First, it examines the nonlinearity of the relationshipbetween inflation and output growth and identifies...

The dissertation encompasses research projects from micro- as well as a macroeconomics. With regard to the microeconomic research agenda, the focus is on individual preferences, in particular risk- and time preferences, whereas the macroeconomic chapter considers the effect of human capital on...