The Big Mac index
The data this week comes from TheEconomist. Their article about this dataset can be found here.
This repository contains the data behind The Economist’s Big Mac index, and code that shows how we calculate it. To download the data, go to the latest release, where you can download the index data in a CSV or Excel, or the code behind it.
Source data
Our source data are from several places. Big Mac prices are from McDonald’s directly and from reporting around the world; exchange rates are from Thomson Reuters; GDP and population data used to calculate the euro area averages are from Eurostat and GDP per person data are from the IMF World Economic Outlook reports.
Get the data here
# Get the Data
# Read in with tidytuesdayR package
# Install from CRAN via: install.packages("tidytuesdayR")
# This loads the readme and all the datasets for the week of interest
# Either ISO-8601 date or year/week works!
tuesdata <- tidytuesdayR::tt_load('2020-12-22')
tuesdata <- tidytuesdayR::tt_load(2020, week = 52)
big-mac <- tuesdata$big-mac
# Or read in the data manually
big-mac <- readr::read_csv('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rfordatascience/tidytuesday/main/data/2020/2020-12-22/big-mac.csv')Data Dictionary
big-mac.csv
| variable | definition | source |
|---|---|---|
| date | Date of observation | |
| iso_a3 | Three-character [ISO 3166-1 country code][iso 3166-1] | |
| currency_code | Three-character [ISO 4217 currency code][iso 4217] | |
| name | Country name | |
| local_price | Price of a Big Mac in the local currency | McDonalds; The Economist |
| dollar_ex | Local currency units per dollar | Reuters |
| dollar_price | Price of a Big Mac in dollars | |
| USD_raw | Raw index, relative to the US dollar | |
| EUR_raw | Raw index, relative to the Euro | |
| GBP_raw | Raw index, relative to the British pound | |
| JPY_raw | Raw index, relative to the Japanese yen | |
| CNY_raw | Raw index, relative to the Chinese yuan | |
| GDP_dollar | GDP per person, in dollars | IMF |
| adj_price | GDP-adjusted price of a Big Mac, in dollars | |
| USD_adjusted | Adjusted index, relative to the US dollar | |
| EUR_adjusted | Adjusted index, relative to the Euro | |
| GBP_adjusted | Adjusted index, relative to the British pound | |
| JPY_adjusted | Adjusted index, relative to the Japanese yen | |
| CNY_adjusted | Adjusted index, relative to the Chinese yuan |