Since the determinants of public sector employment are likely to include its
domestic, either political or social, conditions, we are not able to capture this individual
effect by using a cross-sectional dataset. Therefore, we need a more complete dataset
covering more periods, which allows us to perform some econometric models to control
for the individual country effects. For our empirical work, we also adopt a dataset from
the International Labor Organization (ILO hereafter), or the International Labor
Organization Public Sector Dataset. The most important international concept of the
public sector is contained in the System of National Accounts (Hammouya, 1999).37
According to which, the public sector is defined as all market or non-market activities that are controlled and mainly financed by public authority. Public sector employment
comprises employees in the public sector, namely the general government sector and the
public corporation sector.