Investment bank UBS’s “Prices and Earnings” study has dubbed Oslo, Zurich, Copenhagen, Geneva, Tokyo and New York as the world’s most expensive cities based on a standardized basket of 122 goods and services.

When rent prices are factored into the equation, New York, Oslo, Geneva and Tokyo emerge as especially pricey places to live, UBS say.

The basket costs the least in Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Delhi and Mumbai.

The survey of 73 international cities found that employees in Copenhagen, Zürich, Geneva and New York have the highest gross wages. Zürich 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.

People work an average of 1,902 hours per year in the surveyed cities but they work much longer in Asian and Middle Eastern cities, averaging 2,119 and 2,063 hours per year respectively. Overall, the most hours are worked in Cairo (2,373 hours per year), followed by Seoul (2,312 hours). People in Lyon and Paris, by contrast, spend the least amount of time at work according to the global comparison: 1,582 and 1,594 hours per year respectively.

A basket of 95 goods and 27 services was roughly 35% cheaper in the cities of Eastern European EU member states than in Western European metropolises. As a comparison, UBS’s 2006 study found that the price differential between Eastern and Western Europe was around 38%. On average, workers in Western European cities receive gross wages more than three times higher than their colleagues in Eastern Europe. The lowest incomes are paid in Bulgaria (Sofia) and Romania (Bucharest). The wage level in these two countries, which joined the European Union in January 2007, is comparable to that of Colombia or Thailand.

London, the second most expensive city in the 2006 review, plummeted nearly twenty places following the pound’s precipitous devaluation in March and April 2009 when the data was collected, landing in the middle in terms of Western European countries. During this time the GBP reached a low point of roughly 1.40 against the USD from which it recently appreciated to around 1.70. This rebound in the GBP exchange rate increased London’s price level by 21% in USD terms, which would lift London from twenty-first to fifth in our global price ranking.

Rail travel is most expensive in the United Kingdom and Germany. A second-class, one-way ticket for a 200 km rail journey in Germany (average price: EUR 51.40 or USD 67.20) costs approximately 1.5 times as much as in the rest of Western Europe. Only the United Kingdom is more expensive. In London, passengers have to be willing to pay EUR 68.20 (USD 89.10) – double the fare charged in other Western European cities.

The study was based on data collected in 73 cities around the world between March and April of this year.

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