Hana Polackova Brixi

Email: hbrixi@worldbank.org


Hana Polackova BrixiHana Polackova Brixi currently leads the World Bank’s social policy programme in South East Asia. In her career with the World Bank since 1995, Dr Brixi served as Senior Country Economist in China, and Senior Economist and Public Sector Specialist in East Asia and the Pacific Region, and Europe and Central Asia Region. She authored the World Bank China report Promoting Growth with Equity; led the Bank-wide Quality of Fiscal Adjustment Thematic Group, promoting innovation in public finance and public sector management; and managed projects and analytical activities on public finance, governance, and human development. During 2004–2010, Dr Brixi took leave from the Bank to serve as WHO Health Sector Development Coordinator in China, and subsequently as UNICEF Social Policy Chief in China. In these positions, she contributed to China’s policy reforms in health, social protection, and service delivery and financing. During 2004–2010, she was a Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University, School of Public Policy and Management, in Beijing. Dr Brixi’s publications include the book Government at Risk (Oxford University Press). She holds a graduate degree in economics and public policy from Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University; a post-graduate certificate in finance from the Sloan Business School, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); and a PhD in physics from Masaryk University, Czech Republic.




Papers Published in World Economics:


Avoiding Fiscal Crisis

Fiscal activities in the form of contingent liabilities are common in both developed and developing countries, in part because they allow governments to secure public services or economic and financial stability without immediately having to raise taxes or borrow. Yet they pose a fiscal danger as governments may underestimate or under-report their risks and possible future fiscal costs. Although they may not appear in governments’ fiscal reports in the short term, they generate government risk exposures and create fiscal obligations for the medium to long term. The accumulation of such risk exposures and obligations depends on fiscal institutions. Fiscal institutions influence government decisions towards contingent liabilities and fiscal risk, and can contribute to limiting the use and design of contingent liabilities as a form of fiscal activity.

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