Some economists even argue that those prices, transferred into US$, should be more or less the same. Because the McDonald's burger is sold in many countries across the globe and because it is the same product wherever it sold, it should be an apples-to-apples comparison to set the price of a Big Mac in one country and that in another country side by side. In the mid 80s, The Economist magazine invented an ingenious way of comparing price levels in different countries: the Big Mac Index. An amount of money corresponding to US$ 10 will be a considerable amount of money in one country and not much more than a couple of coins in another. That's because people in the US and in Germany and in Switzerland, not to speak from much less developed countries, are living in countries with hugely different price levels and average income rates. But even after transferring the local currency into US$ price comparisons don't tell us the whole truth. If we want to compare these prices, we need a common base.
The Swiss quality newspaper NZZ sells its digital subscription to people in neighboring Germany for €14.90. Germans (people in Germany) only pay €8.76 per month. A digital subscription to the New York Times currently costs US-inhabitants $18.12 per month.
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