During the Great Recession of 2007 and 2008, liquidity and credit dried up, threatening the stability of financial institutions, particularly the banking firms. Traditional source of funds from the last resort, the Discount Window of the Federal Reserve System, failed to remedy the liquidity problem. To assuage the liquidity and credit problem, the Federal Reserve System established several emergency lending facilities and provided unprecedented amount of loans to the banking industry. Using a dataset published by Bloomberg LLP in the aftermaths of the financial crisis, which contains daily loan balances from the Fed, I conduct an event study to test whether financial markets are efficient in reflecting all public, anticipated and classified information in security prices. The most important contribution of this dissertation to the finance discipline and literature is the investigation and analysis of the Fed’s unprecedented loans to the banking industry during the Great Recession and the market reaction to it. The second major contribution of this study is the empirical test of strong form efficient market hypothesis, which has not been feasible due to legal data challenges. This dissertation has other contributions to the finance discipline and banking research. First, I develop an algorithm for measuring the amount of borrowing by banks. Second, I introduce a new “loan balance” ratio to traditional list of bank financial ratios. Third, I use event study methodologies to allow for cross-correlation, heteroscedasticity and event induced-variance change in studying US banks’ performance during the Great Recession.

The final qualifying work (master's thesis) is devoted to the study of consumer lending in the Russian Federation, its problems and development prospects. The subject of the research is economic relations arising in the process of organizing consumer lending. The main purpose of the master's thesis is to analyze consumer lending in the current economic situation in the Russian Federation, identifying the main problems and development prospects. In conclusion, the proposed main methods aimed at the efficiency of growth in consumer lending of the Bank and calculated the economic efficiency of the proposed measures. / Выпускная квалификационная работа (магистерская диссертация) посвящена исследованию потребительского кредитования в Российской Федерации, его проблемам и перспективам развития. Предметом исследования выступают экономические отношения, возникающие в процессе организации потребительского кредитования. Основной целью магистерской диссертации является анализ потребительского кредитования в условиях современной экономической ситуации в Российской Федерации, выявление основных проблем и перспектив развития. В заключении предложены основные методы, направленные на эффективность роста потребительского кредитования Банка и рассчитана экономическая эффективность предложенных мер.