This paper investigates the explanatory power of social convention theory for explaining the persistence of female genital cutting (FGC) in a broad sample of African countries. While influential in policy circles, the idea that FGC is best described as a bad equilibrium in a social coordination...

This paper investigates the relevance of social convention theory (SCT) for explaining the persistence of female genital cutting (FGC) in a broad sample of African countries. While influential in policy circles, the idea that FGC is primarily a bad equilibrium in a social coordination game has...