Asymmetric Effects of the Global RTA Regulatory Cooperation Network on Agricultural Export Quality

ABSTRACT In the post‐tariff era, regulatory differences have become a key barrier to agricultural trade, and RTA regulatory cooperation provides an important channel for coordinating domestic measures across countries. Using RTAs signed by 181 economies worldwide during 1995–2018, this paper constructs a regulatory cooperation network and employs degree centrality and structural holes to capture countries’ embedded positions and examine their effects on agricultural export quality. The results show a clear asymmetry: degree centrality reduces export quality, whereas structural holes enhance it. A one‐standard‐deviation increase in degree centrality is associated with a 0.0017 decline in the export quality index, while a comparable increase in structural holes raises the index by 0.0005. Mechanism analyses suggest that this asymmetry operates through three channels. First, through the market access channel, the results suggest differentiated market positioning across destinations: export quality rises in high‐standard markets, whereas lower‐quality products expand in lower‐standard markets, thereby reducing average export quality. Second, in terms of resource allocation, degree centrality has limited effects, whereas structural holes facilitate cross‐cluster reallocation. Third, at the institutional level, both contribute to improvements in institutional quality. Heterogeneity analyses further show that these effects are stronger for regulation‐intensive products and certain types of regulatory provisions, and differ across development levels: positive for developing economies but negative for developed ones.