Caspar is a Research Officer at the Institute for New Economic Thinking and a Research Fellow at the Wellbeing Research Centre, both of which are part of the University of Oxford. His research focuses on the measurement and determinants of wellbeing.
Regarding measurement, he works on improving the comparability of survey data on people's feelings and analyses whether such data can measure welfare cardinally. Concerning determinants, he investigates how social comparisons and inequalities, particularly with respect to people's incomes, shape wellbeing.
Beyond these foci, he is interested in the wider normative implications of using subjective data, questions of welfare measurement more generally, the determinants and consequences of social mobility, as well as developments in causal inference and machine learning.
Caspar is also a trustee of the Happier Lives Institute, which aims to find the most cost-effective ways to improve global wellbeing.
In December 2020, Caspar completed a DPhil in Social Policy at Nuffield College and the Department of Social Policy & Intervention under the supervision of Brian Nolan (INET, Oxford) and Maarten Vendrik (SBE, Maastricht). His doctoral research was funded by a Barnett House-Nuffield Joint Scholarship.