Person:
Brixi, Hana
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Public sector governance,
Public finance,
Public service delivery,
Human development,
Social Protection and Labor
Degrees
Departments
Global Practice on Social Protection and Jobs
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated
January 31, 2023
Biography
As Practice Manager, Dr. Brixi leads the World Bank engagement on social protection and employment in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. In her career in the World Bank, Dr. Brixi has been advancing analytic and operational contribution to human development, service delivery, and public sector governance. She led the Global Solutions Group on Public Service Delivery and a Thematic Group on Quality of Fiscal Adjustment; and held senior technical positions across regions, including Program Leader for the Gulf countries, Lead Economist for Human Development in the MENA region, and Senior Economist in China and in countries of Europe and Central & South East Asia. Based in China during 2001-10, she served as World Health Organization’s Sector Leader for Health Sector Development and UNICEF Social Policy Chief; and she taught international development as a Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University, School of Public Policy and Management, in Beijing. She published several books, including Trust, Voice and Incentives on governance and service delivery and Government at Risk on contingent liabilities and fiscal risk management (Oxford University Press), and numerous articles on topics of public finance, governance, and human development in professional journals.
Publication Search Results
1 - 4 of 4
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Publication
Tax Expenditures--Shedding Light on Government Spending through the Tax System : Lessons from Developed and Transition Economies
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2004)Recently developing countries have focused attention on the usefulness of tax expenditures' in shaping prudent and transparent fiscal policy. In adopting a market economy, developing countries commonly use tax expenditures as major fiscal policy instruments. However, with limited theoretical understanding of, and ad hoc experience with, applying tax expenditures, developing countries now confront not only revenue losses higher than they had anticipated but also the erosion of their tax bases in systems that generally have been in existence fewer than 10 years. Fortunately, the experience and practice of developed countries offer insights into understanding and applying tax expenditures. Most developed countries have established tax reporting systems, which provide empirical information on their tax expenditures. Such tax reporting systems tend to be part of a country's overall fiscal system for strengthening government finance and contribute significantly to fiscal transparency. Using the information available, several governments attempt to analyze the cost and economic effects of individual tax expenditures. Some governments even bring tax expenditures into the budgetary process and subject them to a level of scrutiny similar to that for direct expenditures. This book contains several papers on how both developed and transition economies define and apply tax expenditure systems. The developed countries-Australia, Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, and the United States-have established tax expenditure accounting and, in varying degress, brought tax expenditures into budgetary process. The experience of China and Poland shed light on why it is important for developing and transition economies to ensure fiscal transparency and to perform systematic fiscal analysis when implementing tax expenditures, as well as how to address these issues in relatively new tax systems. -
Publication
Monitoring Fiscal Risks of Subnational Governments
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2002-03)Growing experience with decentralization indicates that a country's public finance system suffers when subnational governments expose themselves to excessive risk. But central governments often lack the information needed to monitor the fiscal risks of subnational governments. Several countries, having experienced subnational fiscal crises, have established systems to monitor such risks. These systems assess subnational fiscal health and call for central government attention-and possible intervention-if preset indicators of fiscal imprudence are exceeded. In developing countries such systems also provide useful information for subnational credit ratings. This note describes several country experiences with indicators of subnational fiscal risks, identifies some limitations of such indicators, and suggests alternative indicators. -
Publication
Trust, Voice, and Incentives : Learning from Local Success Stories in Service Delivery in the Middle East and North Africa
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2015-04)This report examines the role of incentives, trust, and engagement as critical determinants of service delivery performance in MENA countries. Focusing on education and health, the report illustrates how the weak external and internal accountability undermines policy implementation and service delivery performance and how such a cycle of poor performance can be counteracted. Case studies of local success reveal the importance of both formal and informal accountability relationships and the role of local leadership in inspiring and institutionalizing incentives toward better service delivery performance. Enhancing services for MENA citizens requires forging a stronger social contract among public servants, citizens, and service providers while empowering communities and local leaders to find 'best fit' solutions. Learning from the variations within countries, especially the outstanding local successes, can serve as a solid basis for new ideas and inspiration for improving service delivery. Such learning may help the World Bank Group and other donors as well as national and local leaders and civil society, in developing ways to enhance the trust, voice, and incentives for service delivery to meet citizens’ needs and expectations. -
Publication
Public-Private Partnerships in the New EU Member States
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2007)Public-private partnerships (PPPs) operate at the boundary of the public and private sectors, being neither fully public nor fully private. PPPs are defined in this paper as privately financed infrastructure projects in which a private firm either: (i) sells its services to the government; or (ii) sells its services to third parties with significant fiscal support in the form of guarantees. Despite these common elements of PPPs across sectors, there are differences in the type of arrangements that are typical in each sector. This study focuses on whether and when using PPPs can create fiscal space for additional infrastructure investments in the EU8. In doing so, the paper will examine the fiscal risks of PPPs and the role of fiscal institutions in this regard, including how these affect the use and design of PPPs and thus the potential for creating fiscal space while promoting investment in infrastructure. Chapter 2 distinguishes the illusory from the real fiscal effects of PPPs. Chapter 3 relates the extent to which PPPs reduce fiscal costs to the nature of fiscal institutions. Chapter 4 explains how fiscal institutions can be improved to encourage fiscal prudence in the use and design of PPPs. Chapter 5 concludes.