GATE Economics (XH-C1) PYQ: Topic-Wise Weightage 2023–2026

The official GATE site gives you the papers and keys. It does not tell you which parts of the syllabus they actually test. We went through all 156 Economics questions of the 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026 papers (39 a year, 60 marks), put each one into one of the seven syllabus sections and checked every answer against the final key. The result is clear. Microeconomics, Section 3 (statistics, econometrics and maths) and Macroeconomics together take about 42 of the 60 marks. The four smaller sections, International, Public, Development and the Indian Economy, share the remaining 17–18, and their shares swing a lot from year to year.

Our classification of the official XH-C1 papers and final keys, 2023–2026.

Read the table as ranges rather than targets. Microeconomics has never fallen below 13 marks, and Macroeconomics and Section 3 have each stayed at 10 or more. The small sections are where the paper surprises: International Economics fell from 7 marks in 2023 to 2 in 2025, and the Indian Economy rose to 7 in 2026. A plan that gives the three large sections about 70% of your subject time and spreads the rest evenly is what four years of papers support.

Two things stand out. First, NAT is steady at 20–24 marks: a numerical answer typed in, with no options to eliminate and no penalty for a wrong answer. Most NATs are computation, such as elasticities, multipliers, equilibrium prices, expected values and regression coefficients, so speed with arithmetic matters here more than in any other Humanities section. Second, the MCQ share moves between 18 and 29 marks. Unlike engineering papers, Economics has not drifted towards all-numerical questions.

These are the topics we found asked in two or more of the four papers, with question numbers so you can go straight to them in the official PDFs.

The Indian Economy questions deserve a separate note because they are the ones no textbook covers: they use current data and schemes. Recent examples are government schemes (2026 Q30, Q46), the PLFS 2023-24 labour survey (2026 Q56), Economic Survey trade figures (2026 Q57), the 14th Finance Commission (2023 Q38), PMKVY (2023 Q40), MSP and the CACP (2024 Q32) and the 1991 reforms (2025 Q37). Reading the latest Economic Survey and Union Budget summaries in January is the cheapest preparation for those 3–7 marks.

The GATE 2027 download page (IIT Madras) carries every paper back to 2007, but Economics exists only from the XH paper's introduction. For 2022 and 2023 all six XH sections are in one PDF, so search it for “Economics” or “C1” and keep only those pages; the Economics block is numbered Q27–Q65. For 2024–2026 there is a separate Economics file.

Use the older papers differently from the newer ones. The 2022 and 2023 papers are worth writing whole, but mark the handful of Section 3 questions against the 2027 syllabus rather than the old one: “statistical inference” items are now filed under estimation and hypothesis testing, and none of them tests the new time-series block. The 2025 paper is the easiest of the four by its mean mark (38.18 against 23–31 in the other years), so a high mark there tells you less than the same mark on the 2024 or 2026 paper. Write 2026 last, closest to the exam, because it is the best guide to the current setters.