Big Mac Index

The 10 most expensive cities in the world, says EIU, are (from the top down) Oslo, Tokyo, Reykjavik, Osaka, Paris, Copenhagen, London, Zurich, Geneva, and Helsinki. The press report didn't list any others, nor did it show the least expensive cities—to get at those numbers, you have to pay thousands of dollars to subscribe to EIU's cost-comparison service.
However, there's another available index—for countries, not cities—that does show low-cost areas. Oddly enough, it's based on a very simple premise: the local price for a Big Mac. Don't sneer: Some very learned economists believe that the price of a Big Mac, converted to U.S. dollars, is a reasonably good approximation of how far your dollars will go for other local expenses.
The latest "Big Mac Index," also from the Economist, shows Switzerland at the top, with a Big Mac price of $4.93, compared with $3.15 in the U.S. Other high-cost countries are Denmark and Sweden—findings that are roughly comparable to the EIU's city rankings.
At the other end of the scale, the cheapest Big Macs reported in the index are mostly in Asia—China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines—along with some relatively underdeveloped countries including Argentina, Russia, Egypt, and much of Eastern Europe.