Research

Publications

NoteAggregation trees

Di Francesco, R. (2026). Econometric Reviews, 1–26

πŸ“„ Paper πŸ’» R package

NoteCausal inference for qualitative outcomes

Di Francesco, R. & Mellace, G. (2025). Economics Letters, 112626.

πŸ“„ Paper πŸ’» R package

NoteOrdered correlation forest

Di Francesco, R. (2025). Econometric Reviews, 44(4), 416–432.

πŸ“„ Paper πŸ’» R package

Working papers

NoteBehavioral Consequences of Sexual Orientation Disclosure in a Large-Scale Digital Environment (2026)

arXiv:2403.03649 (with Enzo Brox)

Many individuals hesitate to disclose their sexual orientation, anticipating that disclosure may alter how others respond to them. At the same time, concealing one’s identity can entail substantial personal and social costs. Understanding how others react to sexual orientation disclosure is therefore central to evaluating the broader consequences of coming out. This paper uses an innovative data set from a popular online video game together with a natural experiment to causally identify behavioral responses to sexual minority disclosure. We exploit exogenous variation in the identity of a playable character to identify the effects of coming out on players’ revealed preferences for that character across diverse regions globally. Our findings reveal a substantial and persistent negative impact of coming out.

πŸ“„ Paper

πŸ† Award
Emerging Econometrician
πŸ“° Press
Article image
Newspaper article about the paper