Microeconomics

• Consumer theory: Preference, utility and representation theorem, budget constraint, choice, demand (ordinary and compensated), Slutsky equations, choice under risk and uncertainty, revealed preference axioms
• Production, costs with perfectly competitive markets: Technology, isoquants, production with one and more variable inputs, returns to scale, short run and long run costs, cost curves in the short run and long run, perfect competition in markets
• General equilibrium and welfare: Equilibrium and efficiency under pure exchange and production, welfare economics, theorems of welfare economics
• Market structure: Monopoly, pricing with market power, price discrimination (first, second and third), monopolistic competition and oligopoly
• Game theory: Strategic form games, Nash equilibrium, mixed extension and mixed strategy Nash equilibrium, iterated elimination of dominated strategies, examples: Cournot, Bertrand duopolies, Prisoner’s dilemma, cooperative game theory: Shapley value, Nash bargaining
• Public goods and market failure: Externalities, public goods and markets with asymmetric information (adverse selection and moral hazard), VCG mechanism and transfer rules

Macroeconomics

• National Income Accounting: Structure, key concepts, measurements, and circular flow of income - for closed and open economy, money, fiscal and foreign sector variables - concepts and measurements
• Behavioural and Technological Functions - Consumption functions - absolute income hypothesis, life-cycle and permanent income hypothesis, investment functions- Keynesian, money demand and supply functions, production function
• Business Cycles and Economic Models: Business cycles-facts and features, the Classical model of the business cycle. the Keynesian model of the business cycle, simple Keynesian cross model of income and employment determination and the multiplier (in a closed economy), IS-LM Model, Hicks’ IS-LM synthesis, role of monetary and fiscal policy
• Business Cycles and Economic Models (Open Economy): Open economy, Mundell-Fleming model, Keynesian flexible price (aggregate demand and aggregate supply) model, role of monetary and fiscal policy
• Inflation and Unemployment: Inflation - theories, measurement, causes, and effects, Unemployment -types, measurement, causes, and effects
• Growth Models: Harrod-Domar, Solow and Neo-classical growth models

Statistics for Economics

• Probability theory, Sample spaces and events, Axioms of probability and their properties, conditional probability and Bayes’ rule, independent events
• Random variables and probability distributions, probability distributions, expected values and functions of random variables, properties of commonly used discrete and continuous distributions
• Random sampling, Density and distribution functions for jointly distributed random variables, computing expected values of jointly distributed random variables, covariance and correlation coefficients
• Point and interval estimation, estimation of population parameters using methods of moments and maximum likelihood procedures, properties of estimators, confidence intervals
• Hypothesis testing, distributions of test statistics, testing hypotheses related to population parameters, Type I and Type II errors, the power of a test, tests for comparing parameters from two samples

Indian Economy

• Indian economy before 1950: Transfer of tribute, deindustrialization of India
• Planning and Indian development: Planning models, relation between agricultural and industrial growth, challenges faced by Indian planning
• Indian economy after 1991: Balance of payments crisis in 1991, major aspects of economic reforms in India after 1991, reforms in trade and foreign investment
• Banking, finance and macroeconomic policies: aspects of banking in India, CRR and SLR, financial sector reforms in India, fiscal deficit, savings and investment rates in India
• Inequalities in social development: India’s achievements in health, education and other social sectors, disparities between Indian States in human development
• Poverty: Methodology of poverty estimation, Issues in poverty estimation in India
• India’s labour market: unemployment, labour force participation rates

Mathematics for Economics

• Preliminaries and Functions of one real variable: a. Set theory and number theory, Graphs, elementary types of functions: quadratic, polynomial, power, exponential, logarithmic, sequences and series: convergence, algebraic properties and applications, b. Continuous functions: characterisations, properties with respect to various operations and applications, c. Differentiable functions: characterisations, properties with respect to various operations and applications, d. Second and higher order derivatives: properties and applications
• Single-variable optimization: Geometric properties of functions: convex functions, their characterisations and applications, local and global optima: geometric and calculus-based characterisations, and applications. Linear algebra: Vector spaces - algebraic and geometric properties, scalar products, norms, orthogonality, linear transformations: properties, matrix representations and elementary operations, systems of linear equations: properties of their solution sets, determinants: characterisation, properties and applications
• Functions of several real variables: Geometric representations - graphs and level curves, differentiable functions: characterisations, properties with respect to various operations and applications, second order derivatives: properties and applications, the implicit function theorem, and application to comparative statics problems, homogeneous and homothetic functions: characterisations and applications
• Multivariate optimization: Convex sets, geometric properties of functions: convex functions, their characterisations, properties and applications, further geometric properties of functions: quasi-convex functions, their characterisations, properties and applications, unconstrained optimisation: geometric characterisations, characterisations using calculus and applications, constrained optimisation with equality constraints: geometric characterisations, Lagrange characterisation using calculus and applications, properties of value function: envelope theorem and applications
• Linear programming: Graphical solution, matrix formulation, duality, economic interpretation
• Integration, differential equations, and difference equations:- Definite integrals, indefinite integrals and economic applications, first order difference equations, equilibrium and its stability, first order differential equations, phase diagrams and stability