Inequality, democratization and development.

Summary This thesis aims at understanding the effect of an increase in the initial level of inequality on growth. We show, in particular, that an increase in inequality is detrimental to growth. Different mechanisms can explain such a result. The financial rationing approach is one of the possible explanations. Thus, one of our conclusions is that the negative effect of the initial level of inequality on growth is all the stronger when financial rationing is important. Our thesis places particular emphasis on political economy approaches. In a context where agents are financially rationed, and using a non-standard political economy mechanism, we show that the relationship between inequality and growth is non-linear. More generally, the initial distributional conditions turn out to have important implications on the democratization and development processes.