I only just found out. While we’ve been wringing our hands about media transparency and reproducibility, The Economist has been publishing its data sets on GitHub for the better part of a decade. They’ve been building this out steadily, adding more repositories and refining their approach.
The centrepiece is the Big Mac Index. First published in 1986 as a tongue-in-cheek guide to currency valuation, the index uses Big Mac prices across countries to measure purchasing power parity. It’s become one of the most cited informal economic indicators in the world. Since 2018, you’ve been able to download the complete historical data set going back to 2000, along with the R code that crunches the numbers.
For anyone unfamiliar, GitHub is where developers and researchers store and share code. Think of it as Google Drive with version control. Every change is tracked, collaboration is built in and anyone can fork your work to build something new. It’s become the standard platform for open data and reproducible research.
The Economist’s repository (github.com/TheEconomist/big-mac-data) contains the raw data, the processed outputs in CSV and Excel formats and crucially the methodology spelled out in executable code. That last part matters. Publishing data without the processing steps is like showing your homework answer without the working. You can replicate it, but you can’t interrogate it.
The data is released under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0, meaning you’re free to use it commercially as long as you credit the source. The code sits under the MIT License, which is even more permissive.
What strikes me is how quietly this has been happening. There was no grand announcement that I caught, no media tour about transparency. They just started doing it. The Big Mac Index first, then other data sets followed. Each one documented, version controlled and freely available.
This matters for data journalism generally. When The Economist says currency X is overvalued by 23%, you can verify that claim yourself. Researchers can spot errors. Students can learn from real-world examples. Developers can build visualisations that make the data more accessible. The conclusions matter, but so does the evidence trail.
By putting this on GitHub, The Economist joined a growing movement of media organisations, universities and government agencies recognising that good analysis means showing your work. Open data isn’t just about access. It’s about inviting scrutiny. They understood this in 2018, before it became fashionable.
The Big Mac Index started as a lighthearted way to explain purchasing power parity. Now it’s a teaching tool, a research data set and a reminder that legacy institutions can adapt without making a fuss about it. From fighting the Corn Laws in 1843 to publishing on GitHub in 2018, The Economist keeps evolving.
If you care about economics, data or how media organisations can operate with more transparency, the repository is worth exploring. And if you’re building something that needs currency comparison data, it’s been sitting there waiting for you since 2018.
The Economist on GitHub: github.com/TheEconomist
Big Mac Index data: github.com/TheEconomist/big-mac-data
Sources:
- The Economist (economist.com)