 I.e., they showed that Barro's model was a combination of a plausible set of preferences (altruism toward one's children) and an implausible assumption about the game being played by donors and donees.In a series of empirical papers with Stanford economist Michael Boskin, University of Pennsylvania economist Andrew Abel, Yale economist Joseph Altonji, and Tokyo University economist Fumio Hayashi, Kotlikoff and his co-authors showed that there was little, if any, empirical support for Barro's very special model of intergenerational altruism.In life-cycle models without operative intergenerational altruism, the young are the big savers because of every dollar they receive, they save a larger percentage than do the elderly for the simple reason that the elderly are closer to the ends of their lives and want to use it before they lose it.