Inequality in the Context Development Theories: Dependencia Theory and Washington Consensus

This paper describes the characteristics of two important development theories: The Dependencia theory and the Washington consensus as a policy guideline for promoting development, and analyzes the role that inequality plays on their postulates according to the results from the previous analysis. This theoretical exercise is intended to illustrate the relevance of issues related to inequality on any set of policies that intend to generate development and discusses the fact that inequality does matter for growth due to the fact that distributional issues are embedded in the basic principles of economic systems. Any growth promoting policy should incorporate distributional arguments as an element that generates optimal conditions for economic growth by hampering the negative effects on the economy of high income inequality levels.