Assess ability to analyze theoretical mechanisms and empirical evidence on how minimum wage increases affect employment, hours, and labor supply; firm costs, prices, profitability, and automation decisions; and local economic outcomes such as consumer spending, poverty, business turnover, and geographic spillovers. Includes comparing short- vs long-run effects, heterogeneity across sectors and worker groups, interpreting elasticities and causal evaluation methods (e.g., difference-in-differences, natural experiments), and critiquing policy trade-offs and design alternatives.