This diploma thesis focuses on regularization and variable selection in regres- sion models. Basics of penalised likelihood, generalized linear models and their evaluation and comparison based on prediction quality and variable selection are described. Methods called LASSO and LARS for variable selection in normal linear regression are briefly introduced. The main topic of this thesis is method called Boosting. General Boosting algorithm is introduced including functional gradient descent, followed by selection of base procedure, especially the componentwise linear least squares method. Two specific application of general Boosting algorithm are introduced with derivation of some important characteristics. These methods are AdaBoost for data with conditional binomial distribution and L2Boosting for condi- tional normal distribution. As a final point a simulation study comparing LASSO, LARS and L2Boosting methods was conducted. It is shown that methods LASSO and LARS are more suitable for variable selection whereas L2Boosting is more fitting for new data prediction.