This panel features four papers that present important policy implications for state and local government fiscal sustainability. In the first paper, “The Financial Consequences of Government Support to Not-for-Profit Organizations,” the authors use nonprofit tax return data (IRS Statistics of Income), along with structural characteristics of state income tax systems, to estimate the variation in foregone state income tax revenue due to the tax exemption of not-for-profit organizations’ debt (a nearly $400-billion market as of 2010). They further test whether not-for-profit tax-exempt debt directly competes for investors with governmental debt issues and, therefore, drives up government interest costs. In the second, “Local Government Debt Management and the Great Recession: Estimating the Elasticity of Municipal Bonds,” the authors test whether, during an economic downturn, the net change in outstanding debt depends on the elasticity of different types of debt. Specifically, they estimate a log-log model to examine the factors that explain local jurisdictions’ changes in debt levels and estimate revenue and interest rate elasticity. The third paper, “Local Government Financial Condition, Before and After the Great Recession,” then examines the factors that shaped the financial condition of local governments during the “Great Recession,” with emphasis on special districts. Specifically, the author identifies more than 50 variables proposed in other frameworks of the determinants of fiscal health, and then employs an “Extreme Bounds Analysis" to test the robustness of each of those variables. The results suggest ten key variables drive local fiscal condition, and the magnitude of those effects vary across different types of local governments. Finally, in the fourth paper, “Estimating Optimal State Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund Balances,” the authors propose a Monte Carlo simulator for estimating optimal state unemployment insurance trust fund balances under a myriad of economic circumstances and policy regimes. It fills a gap in the UI literature by providing the first estimator for forecasting optimal UI trust fund balances, which is required if the UI program is to be better prepared for future economic downturns. Together, these papers provide four novel insights on predicting, managing, and mitigating fiscal stress in state and local government before, during, and after an economic downturn.