According to the latest Big Mac Index,

This particular basket holds a McDonald's Big Mac, whose price around the world we compared with its American average of $4.20. According to burgernomics the Swiss franc is a meaty 62% overvalued. The exchange rate that would equalise the price of a Swiss Big Mac with an American one is SFr1.55 to the dollar; the actual exchange rate is only 0.96.
The cheapest burger is found in India, costing just $1.62. Though because Big Macs are not sold in India, we take the price of a Maharaja Mac, which is made with chicken instead of beef. Nonetheless, our index suggests the rupee is 60% undercooked.
The euro, which recently fell to a 16-month low against the dollar, is now trading at less than €1.30 to the greenback. The last time we served up our index in July 2011, the euro was 21% overvalued against the dollar, but it is now just 6% overvalued.

Do you also write reports for The Local?

yes... because everything should be pegged to a soft dollar.

And quite frankly, this particularly American is starting to realize that things in America are underpriced and people are grossly under paid.

So to look at the Big Mac Index from another perspective... is the Swiss Franc overvalued? or is the Dollar under valued?

Now if only I could earn here and go back to India for those burgers...sigh! Its strange to be at both ends of the same graph

The dollar is just the standard of measure, it doesn't mean anything besides that, you could have used any other currency and the result would have been exactly the same: that the CHF is extremely overvalued against all currencies on par with the NOK with the important difference of CH not having oil and so depending on its competitiveness to export. Take the AUD as a standard for example, it would mean the CHF is 50% overvalued instead of 60% but the indian rupee would be 60% undervalued instead of 50% so the difference is exactly the same.

Well.... Let me tell you a little story about the Argentine burgernomics.

The commerce minister "negotiated" with McD's to offer the Big Mac at a low price. The Big Mac is actually not on the regular menu. It's posted elsewhere in small letters. The Big Mac sells for a fixed 20pesos where are all the other sandwiches sell for 32+pesos.

They are burger manipulating! Hamburglars!

I thought the Argentine example was quite interesting. But I don't understand enough what it means for a currency to be over or under valued.

do they also take into account the cheap beef in the USA full of antibiotics and steroids, and the expensive 'clean' beef they have to use here?

don't they use mince? the left overs from the cow - probably the mince that doesn't make it to the supermarkets it is so horrible. I am sure that these cuts of meat there isn't much of a price difference, i'd imagine.

Rightttt...Burgernomics...

In the years I've been reading the Economist, according to burgernomics the Swiss Franc has always been overvalued. So I don't think it's a particularly insightful predictor of future trends (certainly not for the Swiss Franc) and to be fair, the Economist doesn't claim this.

A few years ago, after they published one set of burgernomic figures, there was an interesting letter from an NGO concerned with world poverty (can't remember which one). They had a different country indicator. It was how many hours the lowest paid worker in a MacDonalds would have to work to be able to buy a Big Mac. IIRC the shortest was New Zealand where it was something less than half an hour. The longest was Bangladesh where it was over fourteen hours.

There's real beef in a BigMac???

Maybe the US could solve it's obesity epidemic by applying a 'burger protection levy'....

This is the exact point i was about to make, The prices of the raw ingredients to make the burger in those countries changes significantly... As the swiss Macs use Swiss meat (which we all know is Grossly overpriced up to 148chf a kilo) it's understandable the burger will cost more here, so unless u take into account all the values and equalize them throughout the spectrum, it's pointless to compare the same products... It's like comparing a Swiss army knife with a replica made in china...

I was curious about this and did a quick search which took me to a NYT Blog confirming what miniMia says...

Rings a bell, but I think I remember seeing something similar but the object was an iPod rather than Big Mac. Anyway, if anyone has links, please post.

Today's economist talks about the Big Mac Index

The iPod Index also suffers from similar issues. While the cost of production of iPod is same as its made in a single location, but it ignored shipping costs and local taxes/import duties on the devices.

you completely miss the point here. the burgernomics chart specifically accounts for all of these factors already - costs of materials, real estate, labor, etc in coming up with a price for a big mac, a product that is pretty much uniform across every country that has a mcdonalds.

Can you put a price on animal welfare?

You doubt me, young jedi?