GENERAL ECONOMICS

General Economics I

1. Theory of Consumer's Demand:

Cardinal Utility analysis, Indifference Curve analysis - Income and Substitution Effects, the Slutsky theorem - revealed Preference approach.

2. Theory of Production:

Factors of Production - Production Functions - forms of Production Function: Cobb-Douglas, CES and Fixed Co-efficient type - Laws of returns - Returns to scale and returns to a factor - Partial equilibrium versus general equilibrium approach - Equilibrium of the firm and the Industry.

3. Theory of Value:

Pricing under various forms of market organisation like perfect competition, monopoly, monopolistic competition and oligopoly. Public Utility Pricing: Marginal cost pricing, Peak load pricing.

4. Theory of Distribution:

Macro-distribution theories of Ricardo, Marx, Kalecki, Kaldor-Neo-classical approach: Marginal productivity theory of determination of factor prices - factor shares and the 'adding up' problem - Euler's theorem - pricing of factors under imperfect competition.

5. Welfare Economics:

Inter-personal comparison and aggregation problem, divergence between social and private welfare, compensation principle, Pareto optimality, Social choice and other recent schools, including Coase and Sen.

6. 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. Measuring Economic Welfare - socio-economic indicators approach: PQLI and H.D. Index.

7. Theory of Employment, Output and Inflation:

The Classicial and neo-classical approaches - Keynesian theory of Employment - Post-Keynesian developments - the Inflationary gap - Demand-Pull versus Cost-Push Inflation - the Phillip's Curve and its policy implications.

8. Mathematical Methods in Economics:

Derivatives - basic rules of differentiation and its applications to economic functions- Optimisation (concept) - Matrices and their applications in Economics, Input-Output model (concept), Linear Programming and its applications.

General Economics - II

1. Concept of economic growth and development and their measurement:

Characteristics of less developed countries (LDCs) and obstacles to their development - growth, poverty and income distribution - Theories of growth: Classicial Approach: Adam Smith, Marx and Schumpeter - Neo-classical Approach: Robinson, Solow, Kaldor and Harrod-Domar - Theories of Economic Development: Rostow, Rosenstein-Rodan, Nurkse, Hirschman, Leibenstein and Arthur Lewis, Amin and Frank (Dependency school); respective role of the State and the market.

2. International Economics:

Gains from International Trade, terms of trade, trade policy, international trade and economic development - Theories of International Trade: Ricardo, Haberler, Heckscher-Ohlin and Stolper-Samuelson - Theory of Tariffs - Regional Trade Arrangements.

3. Balance of Payments:

Disequilibrium in Balance of Payments, Mechanism of Adjustments, Foreign Trade Multiplier, Exchange Rates, Import and Exchange Controls and Multiple Exchange Rates.

4. Global Institutions:

UN agencies; World Bank, IMF and WTO, Multinational Corporations.

5. Money and Banking:

Its functions and value-quantity Theory of Money: Cash Transaction Approach and the Cash Balances Approach, Friedman's Restatement of the Quantity Theory of Money - the instruments of monetary control - the neutrality of money - the money multiplier.

6. Statistical and Econometric methods:

Averages, dispersions, correlation and regression, time series, index numbers, sampling and survey methods, testing of hypotheses, simple non-parametric tests, drawing of curves based on various linear and non-linear functions; least square methods, other multivariate analysis (only concepts and interpretation of results); ANOVA, factor analysis, principal component analysis, discriminant analysis. Income distributions: Pareto Law of distribution - log-normal distrubution - measurement of income inequality - Lorenz Curve and Gini co-efficient.

General Economics - III

1. Environmental Economics:

Club of Rome, Founex report, Stockholm and Rio Earth summit reports, Convention on Biodiversity, Montreal Protocol on CFC, global warming; externalities, public goods, economic implication of various types of environmental degradation - air, noise, water pollution and exhaustion of non-renewable resources; resource accounting, biological wealth and its depletion or accretion as a part of GDP estimates and sustainable development; remedies : regulations, taxes, market based solutions such as privatisation and pollution permits.

2. Urbanisation and migration:

Lewis, Todaro; informal sector, urban labour market, urban poverty.

3. Project Appraisal:

Criteria for project choices: Internal rate of return, net present value and benefit-costs ratio - social rate of discount - shadow prices of capital, unskilled labour and foreign exchange. Use of project appraisal methods in India.

4. Financial and Capital Markets:

Finance and economic development -financial markets - stock market, gilt market, foreign exchange market - Banking and insurance.

5. Fiscal policy and its objectives:

Limitations of fiscal policy - theories of taxation and expenditure - objectives and effects of public expenditure - effects and incidence of taxation - deficit financing - theory of public debt, debt management, complementarity of monetary and fiscal policy with debt.

6. State, Market and Planning:

Concept and types of planning - rationale of planning in a developing economy - limitations of planning, economics of regulations, decentralised planning.