Zurich/Basel – UBS's 2009 Prices and Earnings study has dubbed Oslo, Zurich, Copenhagen, Geneva, Tokyo and New York as the world's most expensive cities based on a standard set of 122 goods and services. When rent prices are taken into the equation, New York, Oslo, Geneva and Tokyo emerge as especially pricey places to live. The goods set costs the least in Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Delhi and Mumbai. The study data was collected in 73 cities around the world between March and April 2009.

The UBS survey is in contrast with the latest Cost of Living survey by Mercer, which recently indicated Tokyo as the world’s priciest city for expats, while European cities had generally become substantially cheaper. Both surveys, however, found Geneva to be the fourth most expensive city.

UBS survey highlights

• Oslo, Copenhagen, Zurich, Geneva and Tokyo are the world's priciest cities.
• London plummets nearly twenty places from second place because of crisis-driven currency fluctuations. 
• The UK and Germany have the most expensive rail travel.
• Employees in Zurich and Geneva have the highest net wages in the world. 
• Workers in Zurich and New York can buy an iPod nano after nine hours’ work, compared to 20 nine-hour days for workers in Mumbai.
• People in Cairo and Seoul work the longest: roughly 600 hours more per year than Western European peers.

Earnings highest in Switzerland, Denmark and the US
The survey of 73 cities found that employees in Copenhagen, Zurich, Geneva and New York have the highest gross wages. Zurich and Geneva—the two Swiss cities in the study—top the rankings in the international comparison of net wages. By contrast, the average employee in Delhi, Manila, Jakarta and Mumbai earns less than one fifteenth of Swiss hourly wages after taxes.

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