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Economies in East Asia are at different development stages. Economic development has an impact on factor endowments and the intensities, then on the mode of agricultural trade. To examine the trade modes of these seven East Asian countries' agricultural products will give us some hints to understand the question how economic development impacts the changing patterns in comparative advantage (CA) of agricultural products. Therefore, this paper aims to test the question by using a four‐quadrant method.

Trade specialization coefficient is used to analyze the agricultural CA among aggregated agricultural products and two typical kinds of products: labor‐ and land‐intensive agricultural products. Then a four‐quadrant method is applied in this study, where trade specialization of agricultural products consists of 2D: labor‐intensive and land‐intensive. The study intends to test the changing routes of CA of agricultural products under the background of economic development and changing situation of factor endowments.

The analysis result supports that economic development has impact on the trade mode of agricultural products.

The four‐quadrant method is firstly applied to analyze the changing pattern of agricultural products in East Asian countries. This study shows that the changing routes of CA of agricultural products will not limit to only one mode as found by current studies.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impacts of institutional quality (IQ) in exporting and importing countries on agro-food exports from the world's leading emerging economies: Brazil, the Russian Federation, India and China (BRIC countries).

Measuring is based on using the gravity trade model and econometric panel data analysis for the period 1998-2009.

Agro-food exports from the BRIC countries, particularly Brazil and China, have increased. The Russian Federation has experienced stagnating and volatile patterns. Brazil and India have strengthened market shares in the existing importing markets, while the Russian Federation has experienced severe deterioration. The export of existing products is more important than of new products. Agro-food exports are positively associated with IQ and the size of the gross domestic product in exporting and importing countries, but negatively with distance.

Among IQ variables, the focus is on the indices of legal structure and security of property rights and freedom to trade internationally in agro-food importing countries and the BRIC exporting countries.

Different institutions and their quality can affect agro-food exports differently. The impact of institutions is not uniform across product groups.

This paper adds the impacts of IQ on agro-food exports. Except for processed products for final household consumption, agro-food exports from the BRIC countries are positively associated with the quality of the legal structure, the security of property rights and the freedom to trade internationally as IQ in exporting and importing countries.