The Impact of the Yangtze River Delta Urban Agglomeration Expansion on Enterprises’ Export Product Quality: An Analysis Based on Geographic Regression Discontinuity Design

Against the backdrop of the new regional coordinated strategy for development and the push for high-quality growth in foreign trade, understanding how the expansion of the Yangtze River Delta Urban Agglomeration (YRDUA) affects enterprises’ export product quality is of particular importance. This study treats the YRDUA expansion as a quasi-natural experiment and integrates data from China’s Industrial Enterprise Database, China’s Customs Trade Database, and county-level economic statistics. Using a Geographic Regression Discontinuity (GRD) design, it examines the impact of the YRDUA expansion on enterprises’ export product quality and the mechanisms behind it. The results show that the YRDUA expansion significantly improves export product quality for enterprises located in newly incorporated counties, and the effect remains robust across a series of robustness tests. Mechanism analyses indicate that the quality-enhancing effect operates primarily through the alleviation of financing constraints and improvements in enterprise productivity. Heterogeneity analyses further reveal that the YRDUA expansion has no significant effect on foreign-funded enterprises, processing trade enterprises, or enterprises with low growth capability, but generates a significantly positive impact on domestic enterprises, general trade enterprises, and enterprises with high growth capability. These findings enrich the literature on the microeconomic effects of the YRDUA expansion policy and provide crucial policy guidance for other urban agglomerations seeking to foster high-quality development of foreign trade. • This study examines the impact of the expansion of the Yangtze River Delta Urban Agglomeration on enterprises’ export product quality. • The expansion significantly improves enterprises’ export product quality. • The Geographic Regression Discontinuity design is employed to enhance identification accuracy and mitigate endogeneity concerns. • The effect is more pronounced for domestic enterprises, general trade enterprises, and enterprises with high growth capability. • Mechanism analysis indicates that the alleviation of financing constraints and improvements in enterprise productivity are key channels through which the expansion affects enterprises’ export product quality.