The index is the price of a covrig with poppy, sesame or sunflower seeds divided by its 2010 price, times 100. We use the price at most locations.
CPI and wages come straight from the INS Tempo database. The 2010 average is 100. The annual rates this gives match those published by INS.
Covrigi per wage is the average net monthly wage divided by the covrig price. For a whole year we use the price on 1 July.
Minutes of work assume 168 paid hours a month.
What we do not know
2012–2018 have no prices. Luca's website in those years lists products without prices. The covrig cost 1.00 leu both in February 2011 and in 2019, so we assume it stayed there.
The 2010 price comes from a single photographed menu, and the 2024 one from an article saying “two years ago”. We do not know when between 2024 and February 2026 the covrig reached 2.50 lei.
The exact dates of price rises are unknown; only the interval between two observations is.
Prices differed between locations. The map uses one price for every county, and Luca does not have shops everywhere.
County wages are annual and published with a lag; the latest year is 2024.
The Warsaw price comes from a single press article and was not checked in a shop.
Sources
Luca prices 2019–2023: archived pages of simigerialuca.ro and lucatraditie.ro (Wayback Machine), with a menu and price for each location. Links are in the chronology on the front page.
Consumer prices: INS Tempo, series IPC102A (total, monthly) and IPC102D (by product), chained and rebased to the 2010 average = 100.
Wages: INS Tempo, FOM106E (average net wage, annual: national, by county and by sector) to 2024; 2025 and Jul 2026 from INS releases as reported by the press.
Exchange rates: European Central Bank reference rates.
Poland:Ziarul Financiar for the Warsaw price; Eurostat (earn_nt_net) for net earnings.
Map: county outlines from geoBoundaries (World Bank, CC BY 4.0).
