Global policies, economies and market returns are increasingly diverging, with the U.S. Federal Reserve being the first major central bank to start winding down its massive stimulus, the BlackRock Investment Institute (BII) said Thursday.

The Bank of Japan, by contrast, is making a new entry in the quantitative easing (QE) game, it added.

The Fed has sketched out a plan for gradual QE withdrawal, trying to pave the way for a gentle exit from QE in 2014, but it made clear the pace depends on progress on cleaning up and recapitalizing its banks, said BII in its 2013 Outlook Midyear Update report.

While the European Central Bank (ECB) is standing pat for now, its balance sheet is shrinking as solvent banks pay back long-term refinancing operations (LTRO), a monetary stimulus policy aiming at injecting liquidity to the market and boosting lending activity. At the same time, however, Japan is not just talking about labor market reforms and deregulation but implementing them, said BII.

BII economist Benjamin Brodsky said the global economic growth has been slightly upgraded since months before, with Japan undergoing the process of reflation, the U.S. economy in recovery though fiscal austerity, and more encouragingly, the eurozone showing more signs of improvement.

On March 31, 2013, BlackRock's asset under management (AUM) was 3.9 trillion U.S. dollars, one of the biggest institutional investors in the world.