IIT JAM Economics Syllabus 2026: Check Important Topics with Latest Exam Pattern, Download PDF

IIT JAM Economics Syllabus 2026: The IIT JAM Economics (EN) syllabus is a crucial resource for any student aiming to appear for the IIT JAM 2026 examination. The syllabus clearly outlines all the essential topics required for comprehensive preparation in the IIT JAM Economics paper. For the 2026 exam, the IIT JAM online exam is scheduled for February 15, 2026. IIT Bombay is the organising institute and has officially released the IIT JAM Economics syllabus along with the exam notification. All prospective candidates are strongly advised to thoroughly familiarise themselves with this official syllabus to ensure they are well-prepared.

IIT JAM Economics Syllabus 2026

The IIT JAM Economics syllabus is designed to test a candidate's core knowledge and understanding of key Economics topics, such as Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, Statistics for Economics, Indian Economy, and Mathematics for Economics. The goal of the syllabus is not just to see what you've memorised. It's to check if you can use basic rules to solve difficult problems. This shows if you're ready for advanced master's and Ph.D. programs. To prepare effectively for the IIT JAM 2026 exam, it's essential that you're very familiar with the syllabus. Make sure to review the important topics and how much each section is worth.

IIT JAM Economics Syllabus 2026 Section-wise 

The IIT JAM syllabus for Economics (EN) 2026 is divided into different sections of Economics like Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, Statistics for Economics, Indian Economy, and Mathematics for Economics. The detailed list of topics of the IIT JAM Economics syllabus is provided below.

Microeconomics 

• 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) 

Macroeconomics

• 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, MundellFleming 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)

Statistics for Economics 

• 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 number 

• 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 

• Indian economy before 1950: Transfer of tribute, deindustrialization 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, financial sector reforms in India, fiscal and monetary policy, 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 

• Poverty: Methodology of poverty estimation, Issues in poverty estimation in India 

• India’s labour market: unemployment, labour force participation rates 

Mathematics for Economics 

• 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 quasiconvexity 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.

Best Books to Prepare for the IIT JAM Economics (EN) Syllabus 2026

The selection of study material is very crucial in the preparation for the IIT JAM Economics exam. A list of highly recommended books for the IIT JAM Economics syllabus paper is given below.

1. Indian Economy by Mishra & Puri

2. Macro Economic Analysis by Edward Shapiro and H.L. Ahuja

3. Micro Economics by Anna Koutsoyiannis and H.L. Ahuja

4. Statistics and Econometrics by B.L Agarwal

IIT JAM Economics (EN) Exam Pattern 

The IIT JAM Economics paper contains questions based on Basic Economicsematical Concepts and Economics. The IIT JAM Economics exam has 60 questions with a total of 100 marks. The total allotted time for this online exam is 3 hours. The IIT JAM Economics paper consists of Multiple Choice Questions (MCQ), Multiple Select Questions (MSQ), and Numerical Answer Type (NTA) questions. All the important details about the IIT JAM exam pattern for Economics are given in the table below.