Understanding Economics
(i) Definitions of Economics: Adam Smith, Alfred Marshall, Lionel Robbins, Samuelson.
(ii) Basic concepts: utility, price, value, wealth, welfare, money, market, investment, income, production, consumption, savings, etc.
(iii) Basic problems of an economy: what to produce; how to produce; for whom to produce; efficient use of resources; economic growth and development.
(iv) Types of economies: developed, under developed and developing; capitalism, socialism and mixed economy; mechanism used to solve the basic problems faced by each economy.
Problems of National Economy
(i) Population: theories of population (Malthusian and Optimum); demographic transition; population growth over the years; census of 2001; age, sex composition; density of population and occupational distribution; the current National Policy on Population. Overpopulation and under population – merits and demerits.
(ii) Problem of unemployment: meaning, types; causes and measures to remove unemployment; Government measures to remove unemployment.
(iii) Poverty: Meaning of poverty line; vicious circle of poverty; causes of poverty; attempted solutions including governmental measures.
(iv) Inequalities in income distribution; causes; consequences and measures to reduce inequalities.
(v) Agriculture: role of agriculture in Economy; agricultural policy: an overview; importance of land reforms, agricultural inputs and Green Revolution; sources of agricultural finance; institutional and non-institutional; food security; public distribution system; flaws in food security system.
(vi) Industrial sector: role and performance of public sector in economy; problems of public sector enterprises; the issue of privatization.
(vii) Capital formation :
Money and Banking
(i) Money: meaning, functions of money.
(ii) Banks: functions of commercial bank; credit creation by commercial banks; Central Bank: need, functions; Central Bank as a controller of credit.
(iii) Inflation: causes, cost-push; demand-pull; effects of inflation on different groups of society; monetary measures to control inflation.
Statistics
(i) Statistics: definition, scope and limitations of statistics.
(ii) Measures of Central Value: average defined; type of averages: arithmetic mean; simple and weighted; median and mode; ungrouped and grouped data; numericals, relationship between mean, median and mode.
(iii) Measures of dispersion: definition, methods of studying variation - range; standard deviation; the mean or average deviation; coefficient of variation; the Lorenz curve.
(iv) Correlation: introduction, scatter diagram; Karl Pearson's coefficient of correlation; Spearman's coefficient of correlation.
(v) Index numbers: simple and weighted - meaning, types and purpose. Problems involved in constructing a Price Index Number.
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