ISS Exam Syllabus

Indian Statistical Service - ISS Exam Syllabus (General Economics)

Section-II

Standard and Syllabi for ISS Exam

Thestandard of papers in General English and General Studies will be suchas may be expected of a graduate of an Indian University.

Thestandard of papers in the other subjects will be that of the Master'sdegree examination of an Indian University in the relevant disciplines.The candidates will be expected to illustrate theory by facts, and toanalyse problems with the help of theory.

They will be expected to be particularly conversant with Indian problems in the field of Economic/Statistics.

General English

Candidateswill be required to write an essay in English. Other questions will bedesigned to test their understanding of English and workmanlike use ofwords. Passages will usually be set for summary or precis.

General Studies

GeneralKnowledge including knowledge of current events and of such matters ofevery day observation and experience in their scientific aspects as maybe expected of an educated person who has not made a special study ofany scientific subject.

The paper willalso include questions on Indian Polity including the political systemand the Constitution of India, History of India and Geography of anature which the candidate should be able to answer without specialstudy.

General Economics-I

1. Theoryof Consumer's Demand: Cardinal Utility analysis, Indifference Curveanalysis - Income and Substitution Effects, the Slutsky theorem -revealed Preference approach.
2. Theoryof Production - Factors of Production - Production Functions - forms ofProduction Function: Cobb-Douglas, CES and Fixed Co-efficient type -Laws of returns - Returns to scale and returns to a factor - Partialequilibrium versus general equilibrium approach - Equilibrium of thefirm and the Industry.
3. Theoryof Value: Pricing under various forms of market organisation likeperfect competition, monopoly, monopolistic competition and oligopoly.Public Utility Pricing: Marginal cost pricing, Peak load pricing.
4. Theoryof Distribution: Macro-distribution theories of Ricardo, Marx, Kalecki,Kaldor-Neo-classical approach: Marginal productivity theory ofdetermination of factor prices - factor shares and the 'adding up'problem - Euler's theorem - pricing of factors under imperfectcompetition.
5. WelfareEconomics - inter-personal comparison and aggregation problem,divergence between social and private welfare, compensation principle,Pareto optimality, Social choice and other recent schools, includingCoase and Sen.
6. Concept ofnational income and social accounting - measurement of national income- Inter-relationship between three measures of national income in thepresence of the Government sector and international transactions.Measuring Economic Welfare - socio-economic indicators approach: PQLIand H.D. Index.
7. Theory ofEmployment, Output and Inflation - the Classicial and neo-classicalapproaches - Keynesian theory of Employment - Post-Keynesiandevelopments - the Inflationary gap - Demand-Pull versus Cost-PushInflation - the Phillip's Curve and its policy implications.
8. MathematicalMethods in Economics: Derivatives - basic rules of differentiation andits 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. Conceptof economic growth and development and their measurement -Characteristics of less developed countries (LDCs) and obstacles totheir development - growth, poverty and income distribution - Theoriesof 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 (Dependencyschool); respective role of the State and the market.
2. InternationalEconomics: Gains from International Trade, terms of trade, tradepolicy, international trade and economic development - Theories ofInternational Trade: Ricardo, Haberler, Heckscher-Ohlin andStolper-Samuelson - Theory of Tariffs - Regional Trade Arrangements.
3. Balanceof Payments: Disequilibrium in Balance of Payments, Mechanism ofAdjustments, Foreign Trade Multiplier, Exchange Rates, Import andExchange Controls and Multiple Exchange Rates.
4. Global Institutions: UN agencies; World Bank, IMF and WTO, Multinational Corporations.
5. Moneyand Banking: its functions and value-quantity Theory of Money: CashTransaction Approach and the Cash Balances Approach, Friedman'sRestatement of the Quantity Theory of Money - the instruments ofmonetary control - the neutrality of money - the money multiplier.
6. Statisticaland Econometric methods: averages, dispersions, correlation andregression, time series, index numbers, sampling and survey methods,testing of hypotheses, simple non-parametric tests, drawing of curvesbased on various linear and non-linear functions; least square methods,other multivariate analysis (only concepts and interpretation ofresults); ANOVA, factor analysis, principal component analysis,discriminant analysis. Income distributions: Pareto Law of distribution- log-normal distrubution - measurement of income inequality - LorenzCurve and Gini co-efficient.

General Economics-III

1. EnvironmentalEconomics: Club of Rome, Founex report, Stockholm and Rio Earth summitreports, Convention on Biodiversity, Montreal Protocol on CFC, globalwarming; externalities, public goods, economic implication of varioustypes of environmental degradation - air, noise, water pollution andexhaustion of non-renewable resources; resource accounting, biologicalwealth and its depletion or accretion as a part of GDP estimates andsustainable development; remedies : regulations, taxes, market basedsolutions such as privatisation and pollution permits.
2. Urbanisation and migration - Lewis, Todaro; informal sector, urban labour market, urban poverty.
3. ProjectAppraisal: Criteria for project choices: Internal rate of return, netpresent value and benefit-costs ratio - social rate of discount -shadow prices of capital, unskilled labour and foreign exchange. Use ofproject appraisal methods in India.
4. Financialand Capital Markets: finance and economic development -financialmarkets - stock market, gilt market, foreign exchange market - Bankingand insurance.
5. Fiscal policyand its objectives - limitations of fiscal policy - theories oftaxation and expenditure - objectives and effects of public expenditure- effects and incidence of taxation - deficit financing - theory ofpublic debt, debt management, complementarity of monetary and fiscalpolicy with debt.
6. State,Market and Planning: concept and types of planning - rationale ofplanning in a developing economy - limitations of planning, economicsof regulations, decentralised planning.

Section-II

Standard and Syllabi

Indian Economics

1. Historyof development and planning - alternative development strategies - goalof self reliance based on import substitution and the post-1991globalisation strategies based on stabilisation and structuraladjustment packages.
2. (a)Decentralised Planning: Panchayat experience-constitutionalobligations, Balwantrai Mehta Committee, Ashok Mehta Committee andother reports, financial aspects of 73rd and 74th constitutionalamendments.
   (b) Union-State financial relations: Constitutionalprovisions relating to fiscal and financial powers of the states,financal aspect fo Sarkaria Commission Report, Finance Commissions andtheir formulae for sharing taxes.
3. Poverty,Unemployment and Human Development during plan period - Appraisal ofGovernment measures - India's human development record in globalperspective.
4. Agricultureand Rural Development: Strategies including those relating totechnologies and institutions: land relations and land reforms, ruralcredit, modern farm inputs and marketing - price policy and subsidies;commercialisation and diversification. Rural development programmesincluding poverty alleviation programmes: development of economic andsocial infrastructure.
5. India'sexperience with Urbanisation and Migration - Different types ofmigratory flows and their impact on the economies of their origin anddestination, the process of growth of urban settlements: urbanstrategies.
6. Industry:Strategy of industrial development - Industrial Policy Reform;Reservation Policy relating to small scale industries. Sources ofindustrial finances - bank, share market, insurance companies, pensionfunds, non-banking sources and foreign direct investment; role offoreign capital for direct investment and portfolio investment. Publicsector reform, privatisation and disinvestment.
7. Labour:Employment, unemployment and under-employment - industrial relationsand labour welfare - strategies for employment generation - Urbanlabour market and informal sector employment; report of NationalCommission on labour, Social issues relating to labour e.g. Childlabour, Bonded labour.
8. Foreigntrade: Salient features of India's foreign trade - composition,direction and organisation of trade: recent changes in trade policy;Balance of payments, tariff policy, exchange rate and WTO requirements.
9. Moneyand Banking: Organisation of India's money market - changing roles ofthe Reserve Bank of India, commercial banks, development financeinstitutions, foreign banks and non-banking financial institutions.
10. Budgetingand Fiscal Policy: Tax, expenditure, budgetary deficits, debt andfiscal reforms. Black money and Parallel economy in India - definition,estimates, genesis, consequences and remedies.
11. Indian Statistical Service - ISS Exam Syllabus (Statistics)

    Section-II

    Standard and Syllabi

    Statistics-I

    (i) Probaility

    Elementsof measure theory, Classical definitions and axiomatic approach. Samplespace. Class of events and Probability measure. Laws of total andcompound probability. Probability of m events out of n. Conditionalprobability, Bayes' theorem. Random variables - discrete andcontinuous. Distribution function.

    Standardprobability distributions - Bernoulli, uniform, binomial, Poisson,geometric, rectangular, exponential, normal, Cauchy, hypergeometric,multinomial, Laplace, negative binomial, beta, gamma, lognormal andcompound. Poisson distribution. Joint distributions, conditionaldistributions, Distributions of functions of random variables.

    Convergencein distribution, in probability, with probability one and in meansquare. Moments and cumulants. Mathematical expectation and conditionalexpectation. Characteristic function and moment and probabilitygenerating functions Inversion uniqueness and continuity theorems.Borel 0-1 law: Kolmogorov's 0-1 law.

    Tchebycheff'sand Kolmogorov's inequalities. Laws of large numbers and central limittheorems for independent variables. Conditional expectation andMartingales.

    (ii) Statistical Methods

12. Collection,compilation and presentation of data, Charts, diagrams and histogram.Frequency distribution. Measures of location, dispersion, skewness andkurtosis. Bivariate and multivariate data. Association and contingency.Curve fitting and orthogonal polynomials. Bivariate normaldistribution. regression-linear, polynomial. Distribution of thecorrelation coefficient, Partial and multiple correlation, Intraclasscorrelation, Correlation ratio.
13. Standarderrors and large sample test. Sampling distributions of x,s2, t,chi-squre and F; tests of significance based on them, Small sampletests.
14. Non-parametrictests-Goodness of fit, sign, median, run, Wicloxon, Mann-Whitney,Wald-Wolfowitz and Kolmogorov-Smirnov. Rank order statistics-minimum,maximum, range and median. Concept of Asymptotic relative effciency.

iii) Numerical Analysis

Interpolationformulae (with remainder terms) due to Lagrange, Newton-Gregory, NewtonDivided different, Gauss and Striling. Euler-Maclaurin's summationformula. Inverse interpolation. Numerical integration anddifferentiation. Difference equations of the first order. Lineardifference equations with constant coefficients.

Statistics II

i) Linear Models

Theoryof linear estimation. Gauss-Markoff setup. Least square estimators. Useof g-inverse. analysis of one-way and two way classified data-fixed,mixed and random effect models. Tests for regression coefficients.

ii) Estimation

Characteristicsof good estimator. Estimation methods of maximum likelihood, minimumchi-square, moments and least squares. Optimal properties of maximumlikelihood estimators. Minimum variance unbiased estimators. Minimumvariance bound estimators. Cramer-Rao inequality. Bhattacharya bounds.Sufficient estimator. factorisation theorem. Complete statistics.

Rao-Blackwell theorem. Confidence interval estimation. Optimum confidence bounds. Resampling, Bootstrap and Jacknife.

iii) Hypotheses testing and Statistical Quality Control

1. Hypothesistesting: Simple and composite hypothesis. Two kinds of error. Criticalregion. Different types of critical regions and similar regions. Powerfunction. Most powerful and uniformly most powerful tests.Neyman-Pearson fundamental lemma. Unbiased test. Randomised test.Likelihood ratio test. Wald's SPRT, OC and ASN functions. Elements ofdecision and game theory.
2. StatisticalQuality Control: Control Charts for variable and attributes. AcceptanceSampling by attributes-Single, double, multiple and sequential Samplingplans; Concepts of AOQL and ATI; Acceptance Sampling by variables-useof Dodge-Romig and other tables.

iv) Multivariate Analysis

Multivariatenormal distribution. Estimation of mean Vector and covariance matrix.Distribution of Hotelling's T2-statistic, Mahalanobis's D2-statistic,and their use in testing. Partial and multiple correlation coefficientsin samples from a multivariate normal population. Wishart'sdistribution, its reproductive and other properties. Wilk's criterion.Discriminant function. Principal components. Canonical variates andcorrelations.

Statistics III

i) Sampling Techniques

Censusversus sample survey. Pilot and large scale sample surveys. Role of NSSorganisation. Simple random sampling with and without replacement.Stratified sampling and sample allocations. Cos and Variance functions.Ratio and Regression methods of estimation. Sampling with probabilityproportional to size. Cluster, double, multiphase, multistage andsystematic sampling. Interpenetrating sub-sampling. Non-sampling errors.

ii) Design and Analysis of Experiments

Principlesof design of experiments. Layout and analysis of completely randomised,randomised block and Latin square designs. Factorial experiments andconfounding in 2n and 3n experiments. Split-plot and strip-plotdesigns. Construction and analysis of balanced and partially balancedincomplete block designs. Analysis of covariance. Analysis ofnon-orthogonal data. analysis of missing and mixed plot data.

iii) Economic Statistics

Componentsof time series. Methods of their determination-variate differencemethod. Yule-Slutsky effect. Correlogram. Autoregressive models offirst and second order. Periodogram analysis. Index numbers of pricesand quantities and their relative merits. Construction of index numbersof wholesale and consumer prices. Income distribution-Pareto and Engelcurves. Concentration curve.

Methods of estimating national income. Inter-sectoral flows. Inter-industry table. Role of CSO.

iv) Econometrics

Theoryand analysis of consumer demand-specification and estimation of demandfunctions. Demand elasticities. Structure and model. Estimation ofparameters in single equation model-classical least squares,generalised least-square, heteroscedasticity, serial correlation,multi-collinearity, errors in variable model. Simultaneous equationmodels-Identification, rank and other conditions. Indirect leastsquares and two stage least squares. Short-term economic forecasting.

Statistics-IV

(i) Stochastic Processes

Specificationsof a Stochastic Process, Markov chains, classification of states,limiting probabilities; stationary distribution; Random walk andGambler's ruin problem. Poisson process, Birth and death process;applications to Queues-M/M/I and M/M/C models. Branching Process.

(ii) Operations Research

Elementsof linear programming. Simplex procedure. Pirnciple of duality.Transport and assignment problems. Single and multi-period inventorycontrol models. ABC analysis. General simulation problems. Replacemnetmodels for items that fail and or items that deteriorate.

(iii) Demography and Vital Statistics

Thelife table, its constitution and properties. Makehams and Gompertzcurves. National life tables. UN model life tables. Abridged lifetables. Stable and stationary populations. Different birth rates. Totalfertility rate. Gross and net reproduction rates. Different mortalityrates. Standardised death rate. Internal and international migration:net migration.

International andpostcensal estimates. Projection method including logistic curvefitting. Decennial population census in India.

(iv) Computer Application and Data Processing

(a) Computer Application

Computersystem concepts: Computer system components and functions. The CentralProcessing unit, Main memory, Bit, Byte, Word, Input/Output Devices,Speeds and memory Capacities in computer systems.

Softwareconcepts: Overview of Operating Systems, Types and Functions ofOperating System, application Software, Software for multi-tasking,multi-programming, Batch Processign Mode, Time sharing mode, Concept ofSystem Support Programme, Overview of Existing Software packages onWord Processing and Spreadsheets.

Overviewof an application Specific Programme: Flow charts, Basics of Algorithm,Fundamental of design and analysis of Algorithm; Basics of datastructure, Queue, Stack.

(b) Data Processing

Data processing:Digital Number System, Number conversions, Binary representation ofintegers, Binary representation of real numbers, Logical Data elementlike cjharacter, fields, records, files, Fundamentals of datatransmission and processing incluidng error contro and error processing.

Data base management:Data Resource management. Data base and file organisation andprocesing. (a) Direct, (b) Sequantial, (c) Indexed Sequential file.Concepts of Client Server architecture, Data Base Administrator. Anoverview of DBMS software.