A McMeal costs the equivalent of $20.90 in Tel Aviv, the highest price on Earth, and $4.90 in Tokyo, once the world’s priciest city.
A new Deutsche Bank report shows that the difference boils down to currency: a shekel strengthened by tech and defense spending, and a yen weakened by two decades of near-zero rates.
Tel Aviv’s wartime boom
Just a decade ago, the Israeli city was a “mid-price Mediterranean city” and now sits among the world’s most expensive ones, according to Deutsche Bank’s report. Since 2012, Tel Aviv’s net salaries are up 137%, apartment prices up 136%, and even a dinner for two costs 122% more.
“Israel’s basket of goods, the consumer basket, has been very expensive,” Zvi Eckstein, a former Bank of Israel deputy governor and the head of the Aaron Economic Policy Institute, told Fortune.
