Big Mac Index

Following on yesterday post, lots of people have heard about the Big Mac Index (The Economist's Big Mac index is an informal way of measuring the purchasing power parity (PPP) between two currencies), well apparently there is now an iPod Index which measures how long an employee would have to work to be able to afford the Apple MP3 player. So while you need to work 10.5 hours to buy an iPod nano with 8 GB of storage in Oslo (11 hours in Copenhagen) you’ll have to sweat for 73 hours in Beijing (177 in Mumbai, ouch!). New York is the lowest with 9 hours.

Back on the Big Mac Index, I now need to fork out the equivalent of USD 5.80 to buy a Big Mac in Norway while I only needed USD 1.80 in Beijing. Not that I would have chosen Mc Donald over the hundreds of nice and cheap restaurants in the Chinese capital!