Pricele #31: Big Mac in Japan 🇯🇵

The Big Mac is the most-quoted price in economics. The Economist started publishing its Big Mac Index in 1986 as a light-hearted way to test purchasing-power parity, the theory that a currency should buy the same basket of goods anywhere. Because the burger is close to identical everywhere it is sold, the gap between what it costs in two countries is a rough read on whether a currency is over- or undervalued.

Of the 45 countries priced for big mac, Japan ranks #40 from the top at $3.03, 45% below the median of $5.53.

Japan is the clearest case in the game of a country that stopped feeling expensive. A weak yen has pushed dollar prices well below where they sat a decade ago, and the Big Mac Index now scores the yen as one of the most undervalued major currencies. Fruit is the exception, since premium apples are a gift category and priced like one. Japan also runs one of the few consumption taxes that changes with how you consume: 10% standard, but 8% on food and non-alcoholic drinks bought to take away, so the same coffee is taxed differently depending on whether you sit down with it. For a table built partly out of café items, that distinction is not academic.

See the full table for big mac in every country or everything priced in Japan.