KSLU Solved Question Papers
Principles of Economics
Previous Year Question Paper with Solution
B.A. LL.B. (Five Years) · Sem 1
2026 Jan Examination
munotes.in
Mumbai
B.A. LL.B. (Five Years) Sem 1 Principles of Economics 2026 Jan Question Paper with Solutions
First published on munotes.in on 21 October 2026.
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Contents
The questions below are the paper as Karnataka State Law University set it at the 2026 Jan examination, in the order it was set.
MarksPage
MarksPage
The Paper as Set
The questions in this volume are the questions asked at the 2026 Jan examination, reproduced as Karnataka State Law University set them, in the order it set them. Long reading passages are shortened to their first and last lines and our summary; the original paper prints them in full. Only the answers are ours. See the original question paper.
Duration 3 hours · Total marks 80 · 20 questions answered
Instructions printed on the paper
- N.B. (1) Answer all five Units. (2) One essay type question and short note is compulsory from each Unit. (3) Figures to the right indicate marks. (4) Answer should be written either in English or Kannada completely.
How to use this volume
Solve the paper first, under exam conditions and against the clock. Then read the answers here and mark your own. Reading a solution before attempting the question feels productive and teaches very little, because recognising an answer is not the same as being able to write one.
Q1
Unit I
(a)Critically explain wealth definition of economics.[10]
Answer
For full marks, cover: who gave the wealth definition and when (Adam Smith, 1776; Mill, 1848); what it says, in their words; its main features; the merits that are still accepted; a full criticism, including Carlyle and Ruskin; and a conclusion on why it was replaced but not forgotten.
The definition
The wealth definition is the oldest definition of economics. It belongs to the classical economists, led by Adam Smith.
Adam Smith's book of 1776 was titled An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. The title itself announced the subject: why some nations are rich and others poor. Smith wrote that political economy "proposes to enrich both the people and the sovereign".
John Stuart Mill kept this focus in 1848. He wrote that writers on political economy "profess to teach, or to investigate, the nature of Wealth, and the laws of its production and distribution".
So, in this view, economics is the science of wealth. It studies how wealth is produced, exchanged, distributed and consumed.
Main features
- Wealth is the centre of study. Everything else is studied for its bearing on wealth.
- Only material goods count as wealth. Services are not wealth.
- Economic man. People are assumed to act only from self-interest.
- National focus. The aim is to make the nation prosperous.
- Minimum State interference. Smith believed the market, guided by self-interest, served society best.
What the wealth view achieved: the pin factory
Smith's famous example shows the strength of studying wealth. He described a small pin factory where ten men, dividing the work into about eighteen operations, could make "upwards of forty-eight thousand pins in a day". Working separately, he wrote, each "certainly could not ... have made twenty, perhaps not one pin in a day". The lesson was that the division of labour multiplies output. A study of wealth thus explained a real source of national prosperity.
Merits
- It founded economics as a separate subject. Smith's work is the starting point of modern economics.
- It studies something real and important. Poverty affects every aspect of life, so the causes of wealth deserve study.
- It produced lasting theory. The division of labour and the working of free markets were first explained in this tradition.
- Wealth is measurable. This gave the young subject a concrete object.
Critical examination
The wealth definition was attacked from many sides.
1. It puts wealth above man. Wealth was treated as the goal of life and man as a means of producing it. This reverses the true order. Wealth is valuable only because it serves human beings.
2. It earned economics a bad name. Thomas Carlyle called economics "the dismal science" in 1849. John Ruskin replied to the wealth view with the line "There is no wealth but life" in Unto This Last (1860). To them, a science of wealth was a selfish science of getting rich.
3. Its meaning of wealth is too narrow. By counting only material goods, it left out services. A teacher, a nurse, a judge and a musician would all be "unproductive". In modern economies services form the largest part of output, so this omission is fatal.
4. The economic man is a fiction. Real people act from love, duty, charity, patriotism and custom. A mother caring for her child, or a volunteer in a flood, does not act from self-interest alone.
5. It ignores scarcity and choice. The real economic problem is that resources are limited while wants are many. The wealth definition does not ask how scarce resources are divided among competing uses.
6. It neglects distribution and welfare. A nation may grow rich while most of its people stay poor. A science of total wealth says little about who gets it.
7. It is too narrow in method. Treating wealth as an end makes economics look like a guide to money-making rather than a social science.
What replaced it
The criticism led to new definitions.
| Definition | Author and year | What it changed |
|---|---|---|
| Welfare | Alfred Marshall, 1890 | Put man first and wealth second |
| Scarcity | Lionel Robbins, 1932 | Made choice among scarce means the subject |
| Growth | Paul Samuelson | Added growth over time |
A fair judgment
Much of the criticism was aimed at a narrow reading of Smith. Smith himself was a moral philosopher who cared about the welfare of ordinary people. His aim of enriching "the people" shows that he saw wealth as serving the nation's inhabitants. The fault lay more in the framing of the definition than in his economics.
Conclusion. The wealth definition of Adam Smith and the classical economists made economics the science of wealth. It gave the subject its start and many of its lasting ideas. But it put wealth above man, counted only material goods, assumed a selfish economic man and ignored scarcity and distribution. Carlyle and Ruskin attacked it on moral grounds, and Marshall and Robbins replaced it on scientific grounds. It survives today not as a definition but as the foundation on which later definitions were built.
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