![how much does a big mac cost in zurich how much does a big mac cost in zurich](https://nomadcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/THE-BIG-MAC-INDEX-AND-GLOBAL-CURRENCIES.png)
That corresponds to nearly 8 Mig Macs in Switzerland. The Swiss NZZ does something very similar, selling subs to its news app for CHF24 but charging CHF54 to people who also want to the ePaper. In the US, that is the value of 6.5 Big Macs. But if readers want to make use of the iPad app, the have to pocket out US36.99. As shown above, the Wall Street Journals only charges 1.8 Big Macs (US9.99) for its low price subscription. And a premium subscription, which also includes access to the digital edition, either an E-Paper or a tablet-optimized multimedia-app.
![how much does a big mac cost in zurich how much does a big mac cost in zurich](https://www.goodthingsguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/mcdonalds-big-mac-index.jpeg)
A basis version, which does lift the paywall in front of the website and maybe gives access to the news app. Many news organizations differentiate between at least two types of subscriptions. The New York Times as well as the Swiss NZZ charge people in their home-markets 3.3 Big Macs, the German FAZ even nearly 4. Even the Wall Street Journals lifts its paywall in return for the local value of not even two burgers. So, what's the price of a digital subscription in burger units?Īs you can see, the German and the Swedish tabloids BILD and Aftonbladet charge the same amount as does the Polish quality newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza: less than 2 Big Macs. For all other non-€ countries I've adopted the prices published by The Economist. When I did my research, it rather were CHF7.50. According to their last article on this topic, a Big Mac in Zurich costs CHF6.50. Doing this, I got the impression that The Economist people underestimated the price of a Big Mac in Switzerland. So I had to research local Big Mac prices for some countries. In The Austrian capital Vienna, you can get the same thing for €4.10. In the French capital Paris, a Big Mac will cost you some €6. But there is no common price of a Big Mac in all of €-Europe. Unfortunately, being a tool to compare currencies, The Economist uses a common price for all countries of the €-zone. You can look up those prices in the Economist's reporting.
![how much does a big mac cost in zurich how much does a big mac cost in zurich](https://marketplus.ch/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/big-mac.jpg)
For many countries, this research already was done by the Economist people. To do this, I needed the local price of a Big Mac. I transposed the local monthly price of several paid content-offerings in to the number of Big Macs, an inhabitant of the given country could purchase in a MacDonald's outlet next to him.
![how much does a big mac cost in zurich how much does a big mac cost in zurich](https://d1ralsognjng37.cloudfront.net/e7589760-8fa4-4468-b084-f90ec3a042b1.jpeg)
Now, I did something similar in order to compare the pricing of digital subscriptions. The Economist calculates its Big Mac Index twice a year as a means to identify currencies which are, in relation to the US$, over-valued or under-valued. Some economists even argue that those prices, transferred into US$, 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.