This is a fun little bit of data calculation and visualisation. It’s a database and then mapping of the global price list for Apple's AAPL +2.72% iPhone 5 s. And there are two interesting ways of using it. The first is simply to look at how prices differ around the world:
You can do this in USD or GBP as you wish. And this can be used to explore the violations of Ricardo’s IronLaw of One Price. Which is where David Ricardo insisted that the prices of traded goods would inevitably move to being equal all over the world. Well, equal minus the transport costs of getting them around the world. And transport costs for an iPhone are trivial: it would be amazing if Apple were paying more than a couple of dollars to airfreight one to anywhere at all. So, we would expect prices to be the same everywhere: but they obviously are not.
You can do this in USD or GBP as you wish. And this can be used to explore the violations of Ricardo’s IronLaw of One Price. Which is where David Ricardo insisted that the prices of traded goods would inevitably move to being equal all over the world. Well, equal minus the transport costs of getting them around the world. And transport costs for an iPhone are trivial: it would be amazing if Apple were paying more than a couple of dollars to airfreight one to anywhere at all. So, we would expect prices to be the same everywhere: but they obviously are not.
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