General English Candidates will be required to write an essay in English. Other
questions will be designed to test their understanding of English and
workmanlike use of words. Passages will usually be set for summary or
precis.
General Studies General Knowledge including knowledge of current events and of
such matters of every day observation and experience in their scientific
aspects as may be expected of an educated person who has not made a special
study of any scientific subject.
The paper will also include questions on Indian Polity including the
political system and the Constitution of India, History of India and Geography
of a nature which the candidate should be able to answer without special
study.
General Economics-I
Part A:
Theory of Consumer’s Demand: Cardinal utility Analysis; Marginal
utility and demand, Consumer’s surplus, Indifference curve Analysis
and utility function, Price income and substitution effects, Slutsky
theorem and derivation of demand curve, Revealed preference theory.
Duality and indirect utility function and expenditure function, Choice
under risk and uncertainty.
Theory of Production: Factors of production and
production function. Forms of Production Functions: Coble-Douglas,
CES and Fixed coefficient type, Translog production function. Laws
of return, Returns to scale and Return to factors of production. Duality
and cost function, Measures of productive efficiency of firms, technical
and allocative efficiency. Partial Equilibrium versus General Equilibrium
approach. Equilibrium of the firm and industry.
Theory of Value: Pricing under different market
structures, public sector pricing, marginal cost pricing, peak load
pricing, cross-subsidy free pricing and average cost pricing. Marshallian
and Walrasian stability analysis. Pricing with incomplete information
and moral hazard problems.
Theory of Distribution: Neo classical distribution
theories; Marginal productivity theory of determination of factor
prices, Factor shares and adding up problems. Euler’s theorem, Pricing
of factors under imperfect competition, monopoly and bilateral monopoly.
Macro-distribution theories of Ricardo, Marx, Kaldor, Kalecki.
Welfare Economics: Inter-personal comparison and
aggregation problem, Public goods and externality, Divergence between
social and private welfare, compensation principle. Pareto optimality.
Social choice and other recent schools, including Coase and Sen and
Game theory.
Part B:
Quantitative Methods in Economics:
Mathematical Methods in Economics: Differentiation
and Integration and their application in economics. Optimisation techniques,
Sets, Matrices and their application in economics. Linear algebra
and Linear programming in economics and Input-output model of Leontief.
Statistical and Econometric Methods: Measures
of central tendency and dispersions, Correlation and Regression. Time
series. Index numbers. Sampling and Survey methods. Testing of hypothesis,
simple non-parametric tests. Drawing of curves based on various linear
and non-linear function. Least square methods and other multivariate
analysis (only concepts and interpretation of results). Analysis of
Variance, Factor analysis, Principle component analysis, Discriminant
analysis. Income distribution: Pareto law of Distribution, lognormal
distribution, measurement of income inequality. Lorenze curve and
Gini coefficient.
General Economics-II
Economic Thought: Mercantilism Physiocrats, Clasical,
Marxist, Neo-classical, Keynesian and Monetarist schools of thought.
Concept of National Income and Social Accounting:
Measurement of National Income, Inter relationship between three measures
of national income in the presence of the Government sector and International
transactions. Environmental considerations, Green national income.
Theory of employment, Output, Inflation, Money and Finance:
The Classical theory of Employment and Output and Neo classical approaches.
Equilibrium, analysis under classical and neo classical analysis.
Keynesian theory of Employment and output. Post Keynesian developments.
The inflationary gap; Demand pull versus cost push inflation, the
Philip’s curve and its policy implication. Classical theory on Money,
Quantity theory of Money. Friedman’s restatement of the quantity theory,
the neutrality of money. The supply and demand for loanable funds
and equilibrium in financial markets, Keynes’ theory on demand for
money.
Financial and Capital Market: Finance and economic
development, financial markets, stock market, gift market, banking
and insurance. Equity markets, Role of Primary and Secondary markets
and efficiency, Derivatives markets; Futures and options.
Economic Growth and Development: Concepts of Economic
Growth and Development and their measurement: characteristics of less
developed countries and obstacles to their development – growth, poverty
and income distribution. Theories of growth: Classical Approach: Adam
Smith, Marx and Schumpeter – Neo classical approach; Robinson, Solow,
Kaldor and harrod Domar. Theories of Economic Development, rostow,
Rosenstein-Roden, Nurske, Hirschman, Leibenstien and Arthur Lewis,
Amin and Frank (Dependency school) respective role of the state and
the market. Utilitarian and Welfariest approach to social development
and A K Sen’s critique. Sen’s capability approach to economic development.
The Human Development Index. Physical quality of Life Index and Human
Povery Index.
International Economics: Gains from International
Trade, Terms of Trade, policy, international trade and economic development
– Theories of Internal Trade; Ricardo, Haberler, Heckcher-Ohlin and
Stopleer-Samuelson – Theory of Tariffs – Regional Trade Arrangements.
Balance of Payments: Disequilibrium in Balance
of Payments, Mechanism of Adjustments, Foreign Trade Multiplier, Exchange
Rates, Import and Exchange Controls and Multiple Exchange Rates.
Global Institutions: UN agencies dealing with
economic aspects, World Bank, IMF and WTO, Multinational Corporations.
General Economics-III
Public Finance: Theories of taxation: Optimal
taxes and tax reforms, incidence of taxation; Theories of public expenditure:
objectives and effects of public expenditure, public expenditure policy
and social cost benefit analysis, criteria of public investment decisions
social rate of discount, shadow prices of investment, unskilled labour
and foreign exchange. Budgetary deficits. Theory of public debt management.
Environmental Economics: Environmentally sustainable
development, Green GDP, UN Methodology of Integrated Environmental
and Economic Accounting. Environmental Values: Users and non-users
values; option value. Valuation Methods: Stated and revealed preference
methods. Design of Environmental Policy Instruments: Pollution taxes
and pollution permits, collective action and informal regulation by
local communities. Theories of exhaustible and renewable resources.
International environmental agreements. Climatic change problems.
Kyoto protocol, tradable permits and carbon taxes.
Industrial Economics: Market structure, conduct
and performance of firms, product differentiation and market concentration,
monopolistic price theory and oligopolistic interdependence and pricing,
entry preventing pricing, micro level investment decisions and the
behavior of firms, research and development and innovation, market
structure and profitability, public policy and development of firms.
State, Market and Planning: Planning in a developing
economy. Planning regulation and market. Indicative Planning. Decentralised
Planning.
Indian Economics
History of Development and Planning: alternative
Development Strategies – goal of self reliance based on import substitution
and protection, the post 1991 globalisation strategies based on stabilization
and structural adjustment packages: fiscal reforms, financial sector
reforms and trade reforms.
Federal Finance: constitutional provisions relating
to fiscal and financial powers of the states, Finance Commissions
and their formulae for sharing taxes, Financial aspect of Sarkaria
Commission Report, financial aspects of 73rd and 74th constitutional
Amendments.
Poverty, Unemployment and Human Development: Estimates
of inequality and poverty measures for India, appraisal of Government
measures, India’s human development record in global perspective.
India’s population policy and development.
Agriculture and Rural Development Strategies:
Technologies and institutions, land relations and land reforms, rural
credit, modern farm inputs and marketing – price policy and subsidies;
commercialization and diversification. Rural development programmes
including poverty alleviation programmes, development of economic
and social infrastructure and New Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.
India’s experience with Urbanisation and Migration:
Different types of migratory flows and their impact on the economies
of their origin and destination, the process of growth of urban settlements;
urban development strategies.
Industry: Strategy of Industrial development:
Industrial Policy Reforms; Reservation Policy relating to small scale
industries. Competition policy, Sources of industrial finances. Bank,
share market, insurace companies, pension funds, non-banking sources
and foreign direct investment, role of foreign capital for direct
investment and portfolio investment, Public Sector reform, privatization
and disinvestments.
Labour: Employment, unemployment and under-employment,
industrial relations and labour welfare – strategies for employment
generation – Urban labour market and informal sector employment, Report
of National Commission on Labour, Social issues relating to labour
e.g. Child Labour, Bonded Labour, International Labour Standard and
its impact.
Foreign Trade: Sailent features of India’s foreign
trade, composition, direction and organization of trade, recent changes
in trade policy, balance of payments, tariff policy, exchange rate,
India and WTO requirements.
Money and Banking: Financial sector reforms, Organisation
of India’s money market, changing roles of the Reserve Bank of India,
commercial banks, development finance institutions, foreign banks
and non-banking financial institutions, Indian capital market and
SEBI, Development in Global Financial Market and its relationship
with Indian Financial Sector.
Inflation: Definition, trends, estimates, consequences
and remedies (control): Wholesale Price Index, Consumer Price Index:
components and trends.
Budgeting and Fiscal Policy: Tax, expenditure,
budgetary deficits, pension and fiscal reforms, Public debt management
and reforms, Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management (FRBM) Act,
Black money and Parallel economy in India – definition, estimates,
genesis, consequences and remedies.
Statistics-I (Objective Type)
(i) Probaility Elements of measure theory, Classical definitions and axiomatic
approach. Sample space. Class of events and Probability measure. Laws
of total and compound probability. Probability of m events out of n. Conditional
probability, Bayes' theorem. Random variables - discrete and continuous.
Distribution function.
Standard probability distributions - Bernoulli, uniform, binomial, Poisson,
geometric, rectangular, exponential, normal, Cauchy, hypergeometric, multinomial,
Laplace, negative binomial, beta, gamma, lognormal and compound. Poisson
distribution. Joint distributions, conditional distributions, Distributions
of functions of random variables.
Convergence in distribution, in probability, with probability one and
in mean square. Moments and cumulants. Mathematical expectation and conditional
expectation. Characteristic function and moment and probability generating
functions Inversion uniqueness and continuity theorems. Borel 0-1 law:
Kolmogorov's 0-1 law.
Tchebycheff's and Kolmogorov's inequalities. Laws of large numbers and
central limit theorems for independent variables. Conditional expectation
and Martingales.
(ii) Statistical Methods
Collection, compilation and presentation of data, Charts, diagrams
and histogram. Frequency distribution. Measures of location, dispersion,
skewness and kurtosis. Bivariate and multivariate data. Association
and contingency. Curve fitting and orthogonal polynomials. Bivariate
normal distribution. regression-linear, polynomial. Distribution of
the correlation coefficient, Partial and multiple correlation, Intraclass
correlation, Correlation ratio.
Standard errors and large sample test. Sampling distributions of
x,s2, t, chi-squre and F; tests of significance based on them, Small
sample tests.
Non-parametric tests-Goodness of fit, sign, median, run, Wicloxon,
Mann-Whitney, Wald-Wolfowitz and Kolmogorov-Smirnov. Rank order statistics-minimum,
maximum, range and median. Concept of Asymptotic relative effciency.
iii) Numerical Analysis Interpolation formulae (with remainder terms) due to Lagrange,
Newton-Gregory, Newton Divided different, Gauss and Striling. Euler-Maclaurin's
summation formula. Inverse interpolation. Numerical integration and differentiation.
Difference equations of the first order. Linear difference equations with
constant coefficients.
Statistics II i) Linear Models Theory of linear estimation. Gauss-Markoff setup. Least square
estimators. Use of g-inverse. analysis of one-way and two way classified
data-fixed, mixed and random effect models. Tests for regression coefficients.
ii) Estimation Characteristics of good estimator. Estimation methods of maximum
likelihood, minimum chi-square, moments and least squares. Optimal properties
of maximum likelihood estimators. Minimum variance unbiased estimators.
Confidence interval estimation. Optimum confidence bounds. Resampling,
Bootstrap and Jacknife.
iii) Hypotheses testing and Statistical Quality Control
Hypothesis testing: Simple and composite hypothesis.
Two kinds of error. Critical region. Different types of critical regions
and similar regions. Power function. Most powerful and uniformly most
powerful tests. Neyman-Pearson fundamental lemma. Unbiased test. Randomised
test. Likelihood ratio test. Wald's SPRT, OC and ASN functions. Elements
of decision and game theory.
Statistical Quality Control: Control Charts for
variable and attributes. Acceptance Sampling by attributes-Single, double,
multiple and sequential Sampling plans; Concepts of AOQL and ATI; Acceptance
Sampling by variables-use of Dodge-Romig and other tables.
iv) Multivariate Analysis
Multivariate normal distribution. Estimation of mean Vector and covariance
matrix. Distribution of Hotelling's T2-statistic, Mahalanobis's D2-statistic,
and their use in testing. Partial and multiple correlation coefficients
in samples from a multivariate normal population. Wishart's distribution,
its reproductive and other properties. Wilk's criterion. Discriminant function.
Principal components. Canonical variates and correlations.
Statistics III
i) Sampling Techniques Census versus sample survey. Pilot and large scale sample surveys.
Role of NSS organisation. Simple random sampling with and without replacement.
Stratified sampling and sample allocations. Cos and Variance functions.
Ratio and Regression methods of estimation. Sampling with probability
proportional to size. Cluster, double, multiphase, multistage and systematic
sampling. Interpenetrating sub-sampling. Non-sampling errors.
ii) Design and Analysis of Experiments Principles of design of experiments. Layout and analysis of completely
randomised, randomised block and Latin square designs. Factorial experiments
and confounding in 2n and 3n experiments. Split-plot and strip-plot designs.
Construction and analysis of balanced and partially balanced incomplete
block designs. Analysis of covariance. Analysis of non-orthogonal data.
analysis of missing and mixed plot data.
iii) Economic Statistics Components of time series. Methods of their determination-variate
difference method. Yule-Slutsky effect. Correlogram. Autoregressive models
of first and second order. Periodogram analysis. Index numbers of prices
and quantities and their relative merits. Construction of index numbers
of wholesale and consumer prices. Income distribution-Pareto and Engel
curves. Concentration curve.
Methods of estimating national income. Inter-sectoral flows. Inter-industry
table. Role of CSO.
iv) Econometrics Theory and analysis of consumer demand-specification and estimation
of demand functions. Demand elasticities. Structure and model. Estimation
of parameters in single equation model-classical least squares, generalised
least-square, heteroscedasticity, serial correlation, multi-collinearity,
errors in variable model. Simultaneous equation models-Identification,
rank and other conditions. Indirect least squares and two stage least
squares. Short-term economic forecasting.
Statistics-IV
(i) Stochastic Processes Specifications of a Stochastic Process, Markov chains, classification
of states, limiting probabilities; stationary distribution; Random walk
and Gambler's ruin problem. Poisson process, Birth and death process;
applications to Queues-M/M/I and M/M/C models. Branching Process.
(ii) Operations Research Elements of linear programming. Simplex procedure. Pirnciple
of duality. Transport and assignment problems. Single and multi-period
inventory control models. ABC analysis. General simulation problems. Replacemnet
models for items that fail and or items that deteriorate.
(iii) Demography and Vital Statistics
The life table, its constitution and properties. Makehams and Gompertz
curves. National life tables. UN model life tables. Abridged life tables.
Stable and stationary populations. Different birth rates. Total fertility
rate. Gross and net reproduction rates. Different mortality rates. Standardised
death rate. Internal and international migration: net migration.
International and postcensal estimates. Projection method including logistic
curve fitting. Decennial population census in India.
(iv) Computer Application and Data Processing
(a) Computer Application Computer system concepts: Computer system components and functions.
The Central Processing unit, Main memory, Bit, Byte, Word, Input/Output
Devices, Speeds and memory Capacities in computer systems.
Software concepts: Overview of Operating Systems, Types and Functions
of Operating System, application Software, Software for multi-tasking,
multi-programming, Batch Processign Mode, Time sharing mode, Concept of
System Support Programme, Overview of Existing Software packages on Word
Processing and Spreadsheets.
Overview of an application Specific Programme: Flow charts, Basics of
Algorithm, Fundamental of design and analysis of Algorithm; Basics of
data structure, Queue, Stack.
(b) Data Processing Data processing: Digital Number System, Number
conversions, Binary representation of integers, Binary representation
of real numbers, Logical Data element like cjharacter, fields, records,
files, Fundamentals of data transmission and processing incluidng error
contro and error processing.
Data base management: Data Resource management. Data
base and file organisation and procesing. (a) Direct, (b) Sequantial,
(c) Indexed Sequential file. Concepts of Client Server architecture, Data
Base Administrator. An overview of DBMS software.
