DEVELOPING AN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL SECURITY INDEX FOR EURO-ATLANTIC AREA COUNTRIES: A PANEL DATA ANALYSIS

The concepts of economic and social security are very complex and dynamic, closely related to many new challenges that characterize todays societies. Our research aims at investigat-ing the economic and social security considering the current vulnerabilities, using an integrated multicriteria approach to this issue, taking into account five pillars (dimensions): demographic, climate, globalization, and ITC adaptation, social, and economic. Based on these dimensions, we developed an Economic and Social Security Index across the Euro-Atlantic countries and we found that the European Union (EU) is better positioned compared to the other country-groups anal-ysed. Furthermore, we estimated the effects of duration of schooling and climate degradation on economic growth, by using the Panel EGLS method over the period 2010-2019, and we compared the results obtained for EU countries to the ones obtained for the other groups of countries in Euro-Atlantic space: EU neighbours and candidate/potential candidate countries and other Eastern EU neighbourhood countries. We found a positive impact of the duration of schooling on the economic growth, which is greater in countries registering high levels of socio-economic security, the effect of the duration of schooling varying depending on the quality of education. In terms of the effects of CO2 emissions on economic growth, we found a negative impact, considering the one year lag.