Fiscal deficits represent an important variable for banks' aggregate credit risk, revealing governments' ability to curb banks' losses in bad states, either with direct cash infusions or with macroeconomic stabilization policies. Deteriorating deficits are associated with increasing financial...

Prior studies find that banks engage in income smoothing to distort financial performancein ways that have implications for capital allocation and regulation. We examine whether banks' incentives to engage in this behavior are reduced by government guarantees, which mitigate concerns about...