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TheEconomist
big-mac-data
Jupyter Notebook2018–2024
TheEconomist / big-mac-data

big-mac-data

Data and methodology for the Big Mac index

Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
11Distinct people
12Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
1.8KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

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What it is

Data and methodology for the Big Mac index

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

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Also in these discussions

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This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year12 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2018-10-10 00:50:53 UTC to 2024-03-15 07:55:39 UTC.

01232018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 2 submissions, 0 comments20182019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 1 submissions, 1 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments20212022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2024

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC220
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC211
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303

What Hacker News says

12 sources
gruez·Mar 15, 2024
>A McDonald’s in France costs twice as much where a coffee costs less than half as much. Source? According to The Economist's big mac index data[1] the price of a big mac in the euro area and the US is within the same ballpark (~10% difference max) regardless of how you measure it. If anything big macs are cheaper in the euro area than in the US. True, France gets lumped in with "euro area", but even if you compare against neighboring countries (eg. Switzerland or Sweden) the difference is nowhere near 2x. [1] https://github.com/TheEconomist/big-mac-data/blob/master/out...
In Weak rules allow ultra-processed foods like Lunchables on school menus (2023)
crazygringo·Jan 13, 2024
Thank you, this is amazing -- especially with so many stories about McDonald's sticker-shock recently. This actually shows where that is and isn't the case, how localized it is. It also illustrates a fundamental problem with the Economist's famous Big Mac Index [1] -- I've never understood how they choose the price of a Big Mac per-country, when it's so extremely variable locally. Even if they tried to choose "major metropolitan city prices", Big Mac prices vary a ton even within New York City, for example. There's more variation within NYC than the Economist reports between many countries. I've never understood it. Edit: their GitHub page [2] reports: > In July 2022 we updated the Big Mac index to use a McDonalds-provided price for the United States (previously, we averaged the price from four major US cities). Which again, gives me no c
Read the rest
onfidence. How is McDonald's providing a single price? That's a black box. And even averaging the cost between four major cities, there's a meaningful difference between a McDonald's in Times Square vs. in the Bronx. So how did they even used to pick a price per-city? So just thanks for this McCheapest site. Pretty awesome to have actually accurate data. [1] https://www.economist.com/big-mac-index [2] https://github.com/TheEconomist/big-mac-data
In A site that tracks the price of a Big Mac in every US McDonald's
bryik·Aug 2, 2023
> In the 1970s/80s, an hour of minimum wage could afford you about 7 big macs. Now, it will not even buy you one. The cost of a Big Mac in 1986 was $1.6 according to the Economist's Big Mac Index dataset[0]. The minimum wage in 1986 was $3.35[1] according to the US Department of Labor. So you could afford at most two Big Macs in 1986, not seven. Also you can definitely afford one big mac with an hour of minimum wage today (minimum wage: $7.25, big mac: $5.36). 0 - https://github.com/TheEconomist/big-mac-data/blob/master/sou... 1 - https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/minimum-wage/history/chart
In Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging
gruez·Mar 18, 2023
>CPI is also a broken measure due to its inability to measure wealth inequality (sampling median purchasers only) And that's fine, because the CPI's job is to measure how prices have changed (ie. inflation), not wealth inequality. Just because a given metric doesn't support your pet cause doesn't mean it's "broken". It's like complaining GDP is a broken metric because it doesn't measure how oppressed minorities are. > Real inflation has likely been ~33% higher than reported for decades (the Big Mac index is probably the true gold standard). I tried to confirm this and the results were far from conclusive. The big mac index data can be obtained from github[1] and gives a 129.9% increase between april 2000 (earliest data available) and july 2022 (latest data available). To compare this against the CPI data, I checked on FRED and the "Consum
Read the rest
er Price Index for All Urban Consumers: Food Away from Home in U.S. City Average"[2] component of the CPI gives a 87.0% for the same time period. If you take those numbers and convert them to annualized rates, you will indeed find a 33.3% difference between them. Looks like your claim is confirmed, right? But not so fast. The CPI category listed above actually breaks down into more detailed categories, including "Limited service meals and snacks", which presumably the big mac falls into. That data isn't available on FRED but can be found on BLS's data viewer[3] and gives you a 105.8% increase for the same time period. If you convert that to an annualized rate the difference between that and the big mac index drops to 15%. I suspect if we try harder we can eliminate more of the discrepancy. For instance, the "Limited service meals and snacks" index was probably computed from a basket of items, not just big macs. Items that have fatter margins (eg. fries or drinks) might have inflated slower than big macs, thereby dragging the growth of the basket down and explaining the difference. [1] https://github.com/TheEconomist/big-mac-data/ [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUSR0000SEFV [3] https://beta.bls.gov/dataViewer/view
In Prices at the supermarket keep rising. So do corporate profits
eulers_secret·Feb 5, 2022
So I thought this was interesting and looked into it. The website has a reference for where they get their big mac prices: > Big Mac Index measures the average price of a Big Mac at McDonald's in the United States and is famously used in the Economist's Big Mac Index to measure inflation. And a link to the Economist article (https://www.economist.com/big-mac-index) where they further link to their methodology: https://github.com/TheEconomist/big-mac-data The USA average seemed high to me, and I found this resource: https://www.zippia.com/advice/how-much-big-mac-costs-states/ - Nov 2021 - which suggests $4.40. But the Economists data/csv file really does say $5.81 for the USA... so that's where I bow out!
In The Big Mac index: Our interactive currency comparison tool

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