This course aims to equip the students with a good understanding of India’s economic problems. The development challenges faced by India during the colonial period and again during the initial decades after independence will be discussed in detail. The primary concern of the course will be on contemporary issues, including social inequalities, constraints to agricultural and industrial growth, and the revolution in the services sector. The coursework will emphasise on a set of readings, classroom interactions and debates.

The course is aimed at developing an understanding of the economic issues in a range of economic activities in the Indian economy. The themes that can be covered include performance of the Indian Economy since 1951, agricultural growth in India, inter-regional variation in growth of output and productivity, farm price policy, recent trends in industrial growth, industrial and licensing policy, policy changes for industrial growth, economic reforms and liberalization, population growth, unemployment, food and nutrition security, and education. It will also include some contemporary issues.

The objective of this course is to introduce students to the basic economic concepts related to health, health care, and health financing. After completion of the course the students shall be able to apply various economic tools for the analysing health outcomes, health care costs, and health policy in developing countries. The students opting for the course are expected to possess basic understanding of microeconomics.

The aim of the course is to make the students familiar with the
most fundamental concepts and results of game theory. This forms the first part of a sequence of two courses on game theory. On successful completion of this course (and the subsequent second part of the course), the students are expected to make clear how game theory and mechanism
design can be applied to their own research. Our intention is
to present the theory with formal proofs of the main theorems including a number of
examples and short questions to enliven the presentation. The course will also include
a number of elaborate exercises, enabling the students to apply these concepts in problem settings.

The course builds on microeconomic and mathematical tools to formalize decision-making by economic agents under different environments, e.g. framing, uncertainty, competitive bidding, tacit collusion etc. Starting from the basic models of consumer’s behavior, the course aims to build advanced theoretical tools to analyze behavioral aspects of physical and virtual market. Various cases (e.g. online purchase, e-auctions, spectrum auctions, tacit business-links etc.) from recent marketing literature would be analyzed with respect to decision-theoretic tools established in the course.

Economics has a significant component of experimentation and data analytics. This course introduces students to experimental methods and computational techniques using real life data. Data analysis and experimental methods of analysis feature prominently in this course.

The objective of this course is to provide introduction to econometric theory and practice. The linear regression model is the main focus of this course. The topics covered in the course include Gauss-Markov assumptions, Small and Large sample properties of least square estimator. Then we proceed to violation of assumptions of Gauss-Markov Theorem, which include heteroskedasticity, autocorrelation, measurement error, omitted variables and simultaneity. We also cover generalized regression models, endogeneity and instrumental variable estimation, limited dependent variable models. We also introduce basic econometric methods with time series and panel data.

Basics of sample survey; variance and covariance; correlation coefficient; simple regression analysis; Gauss-Markov theorem; estimation of regression coefficients; confidence intervals and hypothesis testing in regression analysis; type-I and type-II errors; transformation of variables; multiple regression analysis; multicollinearity, heteroscedaticity, dummy variables, basics of time-series analysis.

Though empirical questions are central in motivating the issues on distribution, this course will mostly draw from theory. Papers published in established journals will cover the major references for this course. It will start from some empirical pattern of development (Kuznet‘s hypothesis), country experiences, etc. to motivate the subject. Then it will try to understand the process of distribution, growth and structural change using standard macroeconomic models. This course will be heavily dependent on Mathematics - mainly calculus.

On successful completion of this course, a student should be able to understand the important economic reasons for enormous worldwide disparities in income levels and standards of living. Using a selection of the most important papers currently on the frontier of in this field, we will explore two particular questions: 1) Why do people in some countries live prosperous lives, while those in others reel under poverty? and 2) What are potential policies which can improve the lives of the poor? Topics of particular interest are those relating to institution, culture, gender, health, political economy, corruption and conflict.