Table of Contents
IIT JAM Economics Syllabus 2025 is available on the IIT Delhi’s official website. However, we have provided the detailed IIT JAM syllabus for easy access. The syllabus includes Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, Statistics for Economics, Indian Economy, and Mathematics for Economics. These subjects are further separated into chapters that cover anything from fundamental ideas to more complex subjects.
Before you start your preparation, go through the IIT JAM Economics exam pattern to know the question types, difficulty level, and distribution of marks in each section, including sectional weightage. In brief, the assessment will comprise MCQs, MSQs, and NATs, totaling 60 questions.
IIT JAM Economics Syllabus 2025: Download PDF
To perform well in IIT JAM, one needs to have clarity on the complete syllabus. Students can check the table given to download the detailed syllabus of IIT JAM Economics Syllabus 2025.
| Particular | Detail |
| IIT JAM Economics Syllabus 2025 | Download Link |
IIT JAM Economics Syllabus 2025: Chapter-wise Topics
Preparing for the IIT JAM Economics 2025 exam starts with a clear understanding of the syllabus. The exam covers a wide range of topics across Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, Statistics, Mathematics, and the Indian Economy. By breaking down the syllabus chapter-wise, you can plan your preparation more efficiently, focus on high-weightage areas, and strengthen your conceptual understanding to perform well in the exam.The updated syllabus includes the following core topics, with several subtopics mentioned below.
Microeconomics
| Topic | Sub-topic |
| Theory of Consumer | Preference, utility and representation theorem, demand (ordinary and compensated) and more. |
| General equilibrium and welfare | Equilibrium and efficiency under pure exchange and production, theorems of welfare economics, and welfare economics |
| Structure of Market | Perfect competition, monopoly, pricing with market power, monopolistic competition and oligopoly, price discrimination (first, second and third) |
| Production and Cost Theory | 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 |
| Theory of Game | Strategic form games, iterated elimination of dominated strategies, mixed extension and mixed strategy Nash equilibrium, examples: Bertrand duopolies, etc. |
| Public goods and market failure | Externalities, public goods and markets with asymmetric information (adverse selection and moral hazard) |
Macroeconomics
| Topic | Sub-topic |
| 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, money demand and supply role, production role, investment functions - Keynesian |
| Business cycles and economic models (open economy) | Open economy, Mundell-Fleming model, Keynesian flexible price (aggregate demand and aggregate supply) |
| Business cycles and economic models (closed economy) | Business cycles-facts and features, the Keynesian model of the business cycle, the Classical model of the business cycle, simple Keynesian cross model of income and employment determination, etc. |
| 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) |
Indian Economy
| Topic | Sub-topic |
| Indian economy before 1950 | Transfer of tribute, deindustrialisation 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, fiscal and monetary policy, financial sector reforms in India, 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 |
| India’s labour market | labour force participation rates and unemployment, |
| Poverty | Methodology of poverty estimation, Issues in poverty estimation in India |
Mathematics for Economics
| Topic | Sub-topic |
| Preliminaries and functions | Number theory and Set theory, elementary functions: polynomial, quadratic, graphs and level curves, convex set, convexity and quasi-convexity of functions, power, logarithmic, exponential, functions of several variables, etc. |
| Differential calculus | Continuity, Limits and differentiability, mean value theorems, Taylor’s theorem, partial differentiation, second and higher order derivatives: properties and applications, and application to comparative statics problems, etc. |
| 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, rank, determinants, linear independence and dependence, eigenvectors and eigenvalues of square matrices, definiteness and semidefiniteness of quadratic forms, etc |
| Optimization | Local and global optima: geometric and calculus-based characterisations, and applications, constrained optimization and method of Lagrange multiplier, properties of value function: envelope theorem and applications, and more. |
Statistics for Economics
| Topic | Sub-topic |
| Theory of Probability | Sample space and events, axioms of probability and their characteristics, conditional probability and Bayes’ rule, independent events, properties of commonly used discrete and continuous distributions, etc |
| Mathematical statistics | Types of sampling, Random sampling, point and interval estimation, estimation of population parameters using methods of moments and maximum likelihood procedures, etc. |
| 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), and more. |
IIT JAM Economics Pattern 2025
IIT JAM is conducted online and lasts 3 hours. Below are the basic highlights of the IIT JAM Economics pattern.
| Particulars | Details |
| Mode of the exam | Computer-Based Test (CBT) |
| Total duration | 3 hours |
| Test Language | English |
| Question type | Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs), Multiple Select Questions (MSQs), and Numerical Answer Type (NAT) |
| Total Questions | 60 |
| Total Marks | 100 marks |
IIT JAM Economics Study Material
Students can refer to various sources for conceptual clarity of the topic. Some of the IIT JAM Economics reference books, as recommended by experts, are given below. With this, solve IIT JAM PYQs and take mock tests diligently.
| Name of the Book | Author Name |
| Introduction to Microeconomics | Karl E. Case and Ray C. Fair, Principles of Economics, Pearson Education, Inc., 8th edition, 2007. |
| Anna Koutsoyiannis and H.L. Ahuja | |
| Indian Economy | Mishra & Puri |
| Lakshmi Subramanian, History of India 1707-1857 | |
| J. Krishnamurty, Occupational Structure | |
| Macroeconomics | N. Gregory Mankiw |
| Olivier Blanchard | |
| John Maynard Keynes- The Economic Consequences of the Peace | |
| Mathematics For Economists | B.C. Mehta and G.M.K. Madnani |
| Mathematical Statistics | John E. Freund |
| An Introduction to Mathematical Statistics and Its Applications | Richard J. Larsen and Morris L. Marx |
| Macro Economic Analysis | Edward Shapiro and H.L. Ahuja |
IIT JAM Economics Previous Years’ Question Papers
IIT JAM Economics previous years’ questions are available for download below. Practice questions and analyse the paper to have an in-depth understanding of its difficulty level, marks distribution, sectional weightage and more.
| Year | Question Paper PDF Link |
| IIT JAM 2024 Economics Question Paper | Download PDF |
| IIT JAM 2023 Economics Question Paper | Download PDF |
| IIT JAM 2022 Economics Question Paper | Download PDF |
| IIT JAM 2021 Economics Question Paper | Download PDF |
Conclusion
Understanding the IIT JAM Economics syllabus 2025 is your first step toward a strategic and focused preparation. With topics ranging from Microeconomics and Macroeconomics to Statistics, Mathematics, and Indian Economy, the syllabus is designed to test both your conceptual clarity and analytical skills. Make sure to cover each unit thoroughly, practice previous year questions, and focus on high-weightage topics. A well-structured study plan aligned with the syllabus will significantly enhance your chances of scoring well in the exam.