Easing monetary measures adopted by the world's major central banks to stimulate growth in their own economies may have ripple effects on emerging countries, The Wall Street Journal said on Thursday.

In a front-page article, The Wall Street Journal said the massive interventions into financial markets by the world's major central banks "are creating a domino effect around the globe," prompting other countries to take steps to offset the upward pressure on their currencies.

"Investors are flocking to countries and assets that offer higher interest rates than the rock-bottom rates offered in Japan, the U.S. and parts of Europe. That is driving other central banks to employ their own measures, in part to keep their interest rates low or make their currencies less attractive," the article argued.

A flurry of news from central banks came in September. The European central bank unveiled an unlimited and sterilized bond- buying program to help the troubled countries, and the U.S. Federal Reserve announced another round of quantitative easing, dubbed QE3, to buy 40 billion dollars of mortgage-backed securities per month until the jobs market improves. The Bank of Japan Wednesday decided to enlarge the size of its asset-purchase program from 70 trillion yen to 80 trillion yen.

The article noted that as with past episodes of aggressive easing by the central banks of the developed countries, many investors are homing in on emerging markets offering higher yields and generally healthier economies.

The Journal said that in the previous round of the Fed's quantitative easing, the dollar weakened "significantly" against most currencies. The Wall Street Journal Dollar Index, a measure of the dollar's value against a basket of major currencies, fell 18 percent in the 13 months from June 2010, when expectations of more Fed stimulus first began to rise, until the 600-billion- dollar bond-buying program ended the following summer.

Meanwhile, the article mentioned that the dollar's decline was "less pronounced" ahead of the Fed's announcement last week, and the current global economy is weaker than late 2010, when the Fed decided to launch the second round of bond-buying program. Job creation slowed sharply since the start of the year in the United States. The euro zone is already in recession. Most emerging countries have seen their export sectors struggle as a result of Europe's woes.

Worries about inflation or asset-price bubbles from central bank efforts to pump money into the financial system, which have been pushed to the back burner for the moment, could quickly revive should economic activity pick up, it warned.