The role of unemployment insurance during the economic and financial crisis

The aim of this paper is to discuss the role of unemployment insurance during recession. Firstly, it presents a brief literature review, according to which unemployment insurance works as a built-in stabilizer for the economy. Secondly, it highlights certain characteristics of these programs in developed and developing countries, in recession periods. Also, it analyzes the evolution of Romanian unemployment insurance indicators during 2004-2009 and finds that public expenditures had an opposite trend to that of GDP and budgetary revenues, decreasing during periods of economic growth and increasing during the current recession, which suggests an interaction with the economic cycle.