IIT JAM Economics Syllabus, Paper Pattern & Past Papers for 2025

Consumer theory

Preference, utility and representation theorem, budget constraint, choice, demand (ordinary and compensated), Slutsky equation, revealed preference axioms 

Theory of production and cost

Production technology, isoquants, production function with one and more inputs, returns to scale, short run and long run costs, cost curves in the short run and long run 

General equilibrium and welfare

Equilibrium and efficiency under pure exchange and production, welfare economics, theorems of welfare economics 

Market structure

Perfect competition, monopoly, pricing with market power, price discrimination (first, second and third), monopolistic competition and oligopoly

Game theory

Strategic form games, iterated elimination of dominated strategies, Nash equilibrium, mixed extension and mixed strategy Nash equilibrium, examples: Cournot, Bertrand duopolies, Prisoner’s dilemma 

Public goods and market failure

Externalities, public goods and markets with asymmetric information (adverse selection and moral hazard) 

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, random walk model of consumption, investment functions – Keynesian, money demand and supply functions, production function

Business cycles and economic models (closed economy)

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 policies

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 policies 

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 (AK model, Romer model and Schumpeterian growth model) 

Probability theory

Sample space and events, axioms of probability and their properties, conditional probability and Bayes’ rule, independent events, random variables and probability distributions, expectation, variance and higher order moments, functions of random variables, properties of commonly used discrete and continuous distributions, density and distribution functions for jointly distributed random variables, mean and variance of jointly distributed random variables, covariance and correlation coefficients

Mathematical statistics

Random sampling, types of sampling, point and interval estimation, estimation of population parameters using methods of moments and maximum likelihood procedures, properties of estimators, sampling distribution, confidence intervals, central limit theorem, law of large numbers

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 

Correlation and regression

Correlation and types of correlation, the nature of regression analysis, method of Ordinary Least Squares (OLS), CLRM assumptions, properties of OLS, goodness of fit, variance and covariance of OLS estimator

Indian economy before 1950 

Transfer of tribute, deindustrialization of 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

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 and monetary policy, savings and investment rates in India

Preliminaries and functions  

Set theory and number theory, elementary functions: quadratic, polynomial, power, exponential, logarithmic, functions of several variables, graphs and level curves, convex set, concavity and quasiconcavity of function, convexity and quasi-convexity of functions, sequences and series: convergence, algebraic properties and applications, complex numbers and its geometrical representation, De Moivre’s theorem and its application 

Differential calculus

Limits, continuity and differentiability,  mean value theorems, Taylor’s theorem, partial differentiation, gradient, chain rule, second and higher order derivatives: properties and applications, implicit function theorem, and application to comparative statics problems, homogeneous and homothetic functions: characterisations and applications

Integral calculus

Definite integrals, fundamental theorems, indefinite integrals and applications 

Differential equations, and difference equations

First order difference equations, first order differential equations and applications 

Linear algebra

Matrix representations and elementary operations, systems of linear equations: properties of their solution, linear independence and dependence, rank, determinants, eigenvectors and eigenvalues of square matrices, symmetric matrices and quadratic forms, definiteness and semidefiniteness of quadratic forms

Optimization

Local and global optima: geometric and calculus-based characterisations, and applications, multivariate optimization, constrained optimization and method of Lagrange multiplier, second order condition of optima, definiteness and optimality, properties of value function: envelope theorem and applications, linear programming: graphical  solution, matrix formulation, duality, economic interpretation.