It is not just The Economist, if there is geo-based pricing, we in NZ usually get a raw deal. For example video games.
Tax is not enough to account for it. Our sales tax is 15%, so twice California, but we are paying well in excess of the difference and we did before the govt. started levying tax on overseas online sales.
I've noticed similar with different magazines. I wanted to subscribe to a popular magazine (can't remember which one it was), and it would've been significantly cheaper to order a digital subscription AND a monthly paper copy i the US, than a mere digital subscription in Europe. How is a digital delivery more expensive than a paper copy? Obviously there's some type of price gouging going on here. Needless to say, I didn't take the subscription as it felt blatantly unfair.
Higher costs due to tax rates and/or cost to comply with New Zealand regulations spread over a relatively small subscriber base.
Small New Zealand subscriber base and New Zealand not being a main target market for The Economist means New Zealand subscribers do not generate as much additional advertising income as those in the US. This is offset by increased subscription rates.
The Economist has a decently large section on European news (being a UK newspaper) as compared to eg the NYTimes. One could argue that therefore the relative "value" is higher for a European than for a US citizen, and they might therefore be willing to pay different prices.
This hypothesis doesn't explain why it's expensive in New Zealand though ...
As a tech worker in NZ, to be fair a home-owning one for a few years, I don't consider it a ridiculously expensive place to live. I'm originally from the US, moved to NZ in 2011. There are some things that cost more here, others less, on the balance I'm certainly not planning on moving back.
In line with the article: "A Big Mac costs 20.9% less in New Zealand (US$4.60) than in the United States (US$5.81) at market exchange rates. Based on differences in GDP per person, a Big Mac should cost 15.5% less. This suggests the dollar is 6.3% undervalued"
You can't buy residential property as a foreigner in Fiji in urban areas and for the land you can buy, you can only buy freehold land, which is about 8% of the total land.
Most small Pacific Islands, for good reason, ban non-citizens from buying land.
Tax is not enough to account for it. Our sales tax is 15%, so twice California, but we are paying well in excess of the difference and we did before the govt. started levying tax on overseas online sales.