Coke's not a bad PPP either! Shaun.
-----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Simon King Sent: Wednesday, 17 July 2002 8:47 PM To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Subject: RE: How many Big Macs to an LX? Hi Collin >was just a joke, initially, but it turns out that it's actually a very >good measure of the relative strengths of currencies, indicating that That's why I used it (another PPP is the Mars bar - but that's out of favour) So how many Big Macs in a MZ-S in Norway (is that where "no" is?) Cheers, Simon -----Original Message----- From: Tom Ivar Helbekkmo [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, 17 July 2002 4:06 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: How many Big Macs to an LX? "Collin Brendemuehl" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > [...] One step above hunger. [...] tasteless piece of "food". [...] Yeah, sure. However, getting off the political soap box for a moment, we get to the fun part: > #3. What's the Big Mac exachange rate? Is it 1 US:2 Can:3.5 UK, etc? It's actually very well defined. We're talking burgernomics, a field rich in tradition since being introduced by the reporting staff of "The Economist". The underlying theory is that of purchasing-power parity (PPP), where one compares the price of a standard basket of goods in different countries, on the assumption that its real, underlying value is the same in any country. You can then ask questions like "how many hours must a person work to earn enough to buy this?", or "is the currency of nation A undervalued or overvalued based on PPP?". The idea that the folks at "The Economist" came up with, a couple of decades ago, was that with MacDonalds having a presence in so many countries, the basket of goods could be reduced to a Big Mac. This was just a joke, initially, but it turns out that it's actually a very good measure of the relative strengths of currencies, indicating that the Big Mac constitutes a representative basket of goods, and that comparing the prices of other goods in "number of (local) Big Macs" can give better results than, say, converting to USD at the current exchange rates... See <http://www.economist.com/markets/Bigmac/index.cfm> for more info and explicit answers, in tabular form, to #3. Specifically, note the April 25th update, which predicted the current fall of the dollar. ;-) -tih -- Popularity is the hallmark of mediocrity. --Niles Crane, "Frasier" - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org . - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org . - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
