research

2027

1. Zero-Interest Green Loans and Home Energy Retrofits: Evidence from France

   Ilya Eryzhenskiy, Louis-Gaëtan Giraudet, and Mariona Segú

   Forthcoming at Journal of the Association of Environment and Resource Economists , 2027

   HAL Working paper, 2025

   Abs PDF

   We evaluate a zero-interest green loan (ZIGL) program implemented in 2009 to encourage home energy retrofits in France. We find eligibility to the program had a 20-22% impact on the extensive margin of investment and 3-5% on the intensive one, but only in the first two years. The effect is most significant for low-income homeowners, which suggests credit constraints are an important barrier to energy efficiency. Using banking data to investigate the post-2011 failure, we find suggestive evidence that banks exploited prospective borrowers’ incomplete information to sell them their own loan products in- stead of a ZIGL.

2026

1. Impact of in-work benefit on employment: evidence from a large reform in France

   Antoine Bozio, Ilya Eryzhenskiy, and Maxime Tô

   In French , 2026

   IPP report 67

   Abs HTML PDF

   The French in-work benefit, known as the prime d’activité, was substantially increased in January 2019, one of the flagship measures of the government’s response to the "yellow vests" movement of autumn 2018. Beyond its direct effect on household purchasing power, this report evaluates the causal effect of the reform on jobseekers and recipients of minimum income benefits.

2025

1. Intergenerational Redistribution with Endogenous Constraints to Household Debt

   Ilya Eryzhenskiy

   Journal of Mathematical Economics, Feb 2025

   Abs HTML PDF

   I study decentralization of optimal allocations in an endowment overlapping-generations economy where young agents face endogenous borrowing constraints. Lenders constrain credit because of limited commitment of borrowers: those can declare bankruptcy and only lose their ability to make savings for retirement in the future. The social planner can use lump-sum transfers and government debt in order to decentralize optimal allocations of consumption goods. I show that policies using government debt decentralize a larger set of optimal allocations, as opposed to balanced-budget policies with the same number of instruments per period. In addition, government debt always rules out equilibria where the private credit market does not operate and can rule out equilibrium steady states with binding borrowing constraints. The results are explained by incentives for saving and debt repayment under limited commitment, so they do not hold under common specifications of exogenous debt constraints.