Measuring Wealth, One Big Mac at a Time

The Takeaway

How do you compare the wealth of nations? An economics professor at Princeton University thinks such a big question has a bite-sized answer: buy a Big Mac. Orley Ashenfelter is the author of the Big Mac Index, which measures a country’s wealth based on a McDonalds worker’s average wage and the cost of a Big Mac. This simple product, which is the same everywhere, can tell a lot of different stories about a country’s economic state.

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