The Japanese central bank has expanded its stimulus program to try to boost the country's sluggish economy, joining its counterparts in the U.S. and Europe in easing the flow of money.

The Bank of Japan Wednesday added $126 billion to its asset-purchase fund, pushing it to $695 billion, in an effort to advance the world's third largest economy.

The bank said the move was necessary because there is “a high degree of uncertainty about the global economy” and that economic activity in Japan “has come to a pause.”

The U.S. central bank, the Federal Reserve, took aggressive action last week in an attempt to improve weak hiring in the American labor market and cut the country's stubbornly high jobless rate. The Fed said that each month it would buy $40 billion worth of securities supported by real estate loans in an effort to spur more lending by banks and spending by businesses and consumers.

Earlier, the European Central Bank said it would buy the bonds being sold by the debt-ridden countries in the 17-nation euro currency bloc to ease their borrowing costs, the latest effort to resolve the continent's three-year governmental debt crisis.