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Despite Japan's recent efforts toward inclusive education and increased support for students with disabilities, evidence indicates that many students with developmental disabilities do not receive adequate support in the general classroom. Through a review of the literature, we identified four main potential barriers to successful inclusive education in Japan: (a) policy limitations, (b) limited specialization of school psychology, (c) teacher capacity, and (d) stigmatization. We also proposed Multi-Tier Systems of Support, Universal Design for Learning, and hiring Education Assistants as promising strategies to address the needs of a subset of underserved students in the general classroom. These strategies can promote a more equitable distribution of resources and support systems across the entire education system.

A planar shape S is a k-fold tile if there is an indexed family T of planar shapes congruent to S that is a k-fold tiling: any point in R2 that is not on the boundary of any shape in T is covered by exactly k shapes in T. Since a 1-fold tile is clearly a k-fold tile for any positive integer k, the subjects of our research are nontrivial k-fold tiles, that is, plane shapes with property “not a 1-fold tile, but a k(≥ 2)-fold tile.” In this paper, we prove some interesting properties about nontrivial k-fold tiles. First, we show that, for any integer k ≥ 2, there exists a polyomino with property “not an h-fold tile for any positive integer h < k, but a k-fold tile.” We also find, for any integer k ≥ 2, polyominoes with the minimum number of cells among ones that are nontrivial k-fold tiles. Next, we prove that, for any integer k = 5 or k ≥ 7, there exists a convex unit-lattice polygon that is a nontrivial k-fold tile whose area is k, and for k = 2 and k = 3, no such convex unit-lattice polygon exists.

The storage management system dCache acts as a disk cache for high-energy physics (HEP) data from the US ATLAS community. Since its disk capacity is considerably smaller than the total volume of ATLAS data, a heuristic is needed to determine what data should be kept on disks. An effective heuristic would be to keep the data files that are expected to be heavily accessed in the near future. Through a careful study of access statistics, we find a few most popular datasets are accessed much more frequently than others, even though these popular datasets change over time. If we could predict the near-term popularity of datasets, we could pin the most popular ones in the disk cache to prevent their accidental removal and guarantee their availability. To predict a dataset popularity, we present several methods for forecasting the number of times a dataset will be accessed in the next day. Test results show that these methods could predict the next-day access counts of popular datasets reliably. This observation is confirmed with dCache logs from two separate time ranges.

The transition of the Worldwide Large Hadron Collider Computing Grid (WLCG) storage services to dual-stack IPv6/IPv4 is almost complete; all Tier-1 and 94% of Tier-2 storage are IPv6 enabled. While most data transfers now use IPv6, a significant number of IPv4 transfers still occur even when both endpoints support IPv6. This paper presents the ongoing efforts of the HEPiX IPv6 working group to steer WLCG toward IPv6-only services by investigating and fixing the obstacles to the use of IPv6 and identifying cases where IPv4 is used when IPv6 is available. Removing IPv4 use is essential for the long-term agreed goal of IPv6-only access to resources within WLCG, thus eliminating the complexity and security concerns associated with dual-stack services. We present our achievements and ongoing challenges as we navigate the final stages of the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 within WLCG.

We evaluate the impact of the global financial crisis (GFC) and recent structural changes in the patterns of hoarding international reserves (IR). We confirm that the determinants of IR hoarding evolve with developments in the global economy. During the pre-GFC period of 1999–2006, gross saving is associated with higher IR in developing and emerging markets. The negative impact of outward direct investment on IR accumulation is consistent with the recent trend of diverting international assets from the international reserve account into tangible foreign assets; the “Joneses' effect” lends support to the regional rivalry in hoarding IR as a motivation; and commodity price volatility induces precautionary buffer hoarding. During the 2007–2009 GFC period, previously significant variables become insignificant or display the opposite effect, probably reflecting the frantic market conditions driven by financial instability. Nevertheless, the propensity to import and gross saving continue to display strong and even larger positive effects on IR holding. The results from the 2010–2012 post-GFC period are dominated by factors that had been mostly overlooked in earlier decades. While the negative effect of swap agreements and the positive effect of gross saving on IR holdings are in line with our expectations, we find a change in the link between outward direct investment and IR in the pre- and post-crisis period. The macro-prudential policy tends to complement IR accumulation. Developed countries display different demand behaviors for IRs -- higher gross saving is associated with lower IR holding, possibly reflecting high-income countries' tendency to deploy their savings in the global capital markets. The presence of sovereign wealth funds motivates developed countries to hold a lower level of IR. Our predictive exercise affirms that an emerging market economy with insufficient IR holdings in 2012 tends to experience exchange rate depreciation against the U.S. dollar when many emerging markets were adjusted to the news of tapering quantitative easing in 2013.

We examine the open macroeconomic policy choices of developing economies from the perspectiveof the economic “trilemma” hypothesis. We construct an index of divergence of the threetrilemma policy choices, and evaluate its patterns in recent decades. We find that the threedimensions of the trilemma configurations are converging towards a “middle ground” amongemerging market economies -- managed exchange rate flexibility underpinned by sizable holdingsof international reserves, intermediate levels of monetary independence, and controlled financialintegration. Emerging market economies with more converged policy choices tend to experiencesmaller output volatility in the last two decades. Emerging markets with relatively low internationalreserves/GDP could experience higher levels of output volatility when they choose a policycombination with a greater degree of policy divergence. Yet this heightened output volatility effectdoes not apply to economies with relatively high international reserves/GDP holding.

Using the “trilemma indexes” developed by Aizenman et al. (2010) that measure the extent ofachievement in each of the three policy goals in the trilemma—monetary independence, exchange ratestability, and financial openness—we examine how policy configurations affect macroeconomicperformances, with focus on the Asian economies. We find that the three policy choices matter for outputvolatility and the medium-term level of inflation. Greater monetary independence is associated with loweroutput volatility while greater exchange rate stability implies greater output volatility, which can bemitigated if a country holds international reserves (IR) at a level higher than a threshold (about 20% ofGDP). Greater monetary autonomy is associated with a higher level of inflation while greater exchangerate stability and greater financial openness could lower the inflation rate. We find that trilemma policyconfigurations affect output volatility through the investment or trade channel depending on the opennessof the economies. Our results indicate that policy makers in a more open economy would prefer pursuinggreater exchange rate stability while holding a massive amount of IR. Asian emerging market economiesare found to be equipped with macroeconomic policy configurations that help the economies to dampenthe volatility of the real exchange rate. These economies’ sizeable amount of IR holding appears toenhance the stabilizing effect of the trilemma policy choices, and this may help explain the recentphenomenal buildup of IR in the region.

We develop a methodology that intuitively characterizes the choices countries have made with respect to the trilemma during the post Bretton-Woods period. The paper first outlines the new metrics for measuring the degree of exchange rate flexibility, monetary independence, and capital account openness while taking into account the recent development of substantial international reserve accumulation. The evolution of our “trilemma indexes” illustrates that, after the early 1990s, industrialized countries accelerated financial openness, but reduced the extent of monetary independence while sharply increasing exchange rate stability, all reflecting the introduction of the euro. In contrast, emerging market countries pursued exchange rate stability as their key priority up to the late 1980s while non-emerging market developing countries has pursued it throughout the period since 1970. As a stark difference from the latter group of countries, emerging market countries have converged towards intermediate levels of all three indexes, characterizing managed flexibility while retaining some degree of monetary autonomy and accelerating financial openness. This recent trend appears to be sustained by using sizable international reserves as a buffer. We also confirm that the weighted sum of the three indexes adds up to a constant, validating the notion that a rise in one trilemma variable should be traded-off with a drop of the weighted sum of the other two. The second part of the paper deals with normative aspects of the trilemma, relating the policy choices to macroeconomic outcomes such as the volatility of output growth and inflation, and medium term inflation rates. Some key findings for developing countries include: (i) greater monetary independence can dampen output volatility while greater exchange rate stability implies greater output volatility, which can be mitigated by reserve accumulation; (ii) greater monetary autonomy is associated with a higher level of inflation while greater exchange rate stability and greater financial openness could lower the inflation level; (iii) a policy pursuit of stable exchange rate while financial development is at the medium level can increase output volatility, (iv) greater financial openness with a high level of financial development can reduce output volatility, though greater financial openness with a low level of financial development can be volatility-increasing; (v) net inflow of portfolio investment and bank lending can increase output volatility and higher levels of short-term debt or total debt services can increase both the level and the volatility of inflation.

We extend our work (Chinn and Ito, 2002) focusing on the links between capital account liberalization, legal and institutional development, and financial development, especially that in equity markets. In a panel data analysis encompassing 108 countries and twenty years ranging from 1980 to 2000, we explore several dimensions of the financial sector. First, we test whether financial openness can lead to equity market development when we control for the level of legal and institutional development. Then, we examine whether the opening of the goods sector is a precondition for financial opening. Finally, we investigate whether a well-developed banking sector is a precondition for financial liberalization to lead to equity market development and also whether bank and equity market development complements or substitutes. Our empirical results suggest that a higher level of financial openness contributes to the development of equity markets only if a threshold level of general legal systems and institutions is attained, which is more prevalent among emerging market countries. Among emerging market countries, a higher level of bureaucratic quality and law and order, as well as the lower levels of corruption, increases the effect of financial opening in fostering the development of equity markets. We also find that the finance-related legal/institutional variables do not enhance the effect of capital account opening as strongly as the general legal/institutional variables. In examining the issue of the sequencing, we find that the liberalization in cross-border goods transactions is found to be a precondition for capital account liberalization. Our findings also indicate that the development in the banking sector is a precondition for equity market development, and that the developments in these two types of financial markets have synergistic effects.

This paper investigates the link between capital account openness and the output cost associated with a currency crisis. Although the Malaysian experience during the Asian crisis of 1997-98 made many researchers and policy makers interested in the effectiveness of a policy restricting cross-border financial transactions to minimize the output cost, this association has not been exposed to a thorough empirical investigation. The probit analysis in this paper shows that the higher the level of financial openness is, the less likely countries are to experience a currency crisis among industrialized and less developed countries. It is found that a higher level of financial openness prior to a crisis helps to reduce output losses for industrialized countries, but not for less developed or emerging market countries. It is also shown that the duration of post-crisis output contraction can be shorter when an industrialized country has a high level of financial openness, but for the group of EMGs the duration of output contraction can be lengthened if a country has more open capital accounts. However, once the country encounters a currency crisis, the effect of capital account openness differs depending on the level of development. The post-crisis level of financial openness helps industrialized countries to reduce the magnitude of output losses while it increases post-crisis output losses for emerging market and less developed countries. A higher rate of financial liberalization is also found to be detrimental to less developed countries. When the dynamics of output gaps after a crisis are investigated, it is found that the negative effect of a higher level of capital account openness lasts for at least three years for emerging market countries. In general, I have found that institutional development such as corruption, law and order, and bureaucratic quality, rather than the level of openness in financial markets, is important in lowering the size of post-crisis output losses for the groups of less developed or emerging market countries. Only the group of IDCs appears to be able to reap the effect of capital account liberalization in terms of reducing the size of post-crisis output losses. Moreover, Mahathir’s type of capital restriction policy immediately after the breakout of a crisis does not appear to be effective.

Japan’s more than a decade long “Great Recession” has presented a disconcerting case of what could happen if interest rates are bounded by zero and deflation sets in. Since Krugman (1998), the commonplace observation is that the deflationary situation combined with the zero nominal interest rate has caused elevated real interest rates, thereby nullifying monetary policy. This paper investigates this oft -cited claim and examines whether it is associated with anomalies in the way real interest rates are determined by employing an error correction model (ECM) based on the time-varying parameter model with Markov-switching variances. Using this model it is revealed that during the 1980s both ex ante and ex post rates were often lower than the equilibrium rates, indicating strong and persistent optimism among agents. However in the 1990s the ex ante real interest rate was persistently higher than the equilibrium, indicating the pessimistic expectations among agents. The time-varying speed of convergence to the equilibrium appears to slow down considerably in 1996-99, making the misalignment in the real interest rate process last twice as long as in the 1980s. In addition the analysis using the Smooth Transition Regression (STR) model shows a regime shift in the real rate process in mid-1995, three years before the implementation of the zero interest rate policy. This result suggests that a situation with an extremely low nominal interest rate, even before it reaches the zero bound, may create anomalies or nonlinearity in the effectiveness of monetary policy.

We study emerging markets' 1980s lost growth decade, triggered by the massive reversal of the snowball effect in the US during 1974–1984, finding that higher flow costs of servicing debt overhang explain the dramatic decline in growth rates of exposed emerging markets. We also show how lowering the US cost of servicing its public debt has been associated with higher US, Japan, and Western Europe real output growth rates during the post WWII recovery decades, 1946–1956, and validate that fiscal adjustments of large countries have strong growth and volatility spillovers effects on exposed emerging markets and developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]