In recent years, with the slow recovery of the global economy, the shrinking of external demands and the rising cost of labor, it is difficult for the comparative advantages of cheap labor to continue to exert the driving force of exports on economic growth. Under this background, it is an important breakthrough for China to build a new type of comparative advantage in exports through institutional reforms, innovations, and excavation of comparative advantages. Among them, the administrative examination and approval center, as a derivative system innovation in the reform of the administrative examination and approval system, is of great significance in reducing the institutional transaction costs and enterprises’ burdens, and helping enterprises develop international markets. The study of this issue will not only help clarify the intrinsic mechanism of this institutional innovation on export trade and dig deeply into the institution comparative advantages, but also has profound policy guidance implications to further deepen the reform of the administrative examination and approval system, and enhance the efficiency of administrative approval and release the vitality of the institution. 　　Based on the perspective of tapping new institutional comparative advantages, this paper firstly examines the effect of administrative approval efficiency on export performance. Specifically, using statistic data of China annual survey of industrial firms over the 1998 to 2006 period, this paper empirically studies the impacts of administrative approval efficiency on exports from the evidence of establishing Administrative Approval Center’s Quasi-Natural Experiment under the assumption that the sample meets the trend consistency and randomness. The difference-in-differences estimations show that, first, Administrative Approval Center can promote cities’ export performance significantly, yet with a certain amount of time lag. Second, there are huge differences between industries on the effect of policies. Industries with high non-state-owned capital intensity and high contract intensity benefit more from policies. Third, from micro-aspects of enterprises, such positive effect on export values is mainly from the raising of extensive margin, especially in domestic-funded, small and incumbent firms. Finally, we analyze the mechanism of how Administrative Approval Center influences export behaviors, and find that it reduces institutional transaction costs and improves firms’ tendency of entering markets and productivity.　　Based on the above findings, this article believes that we must continue to deepen the reform of the administrative examination and approval system, improve the function of the administrative examination and approval center, and further release the institutional dynamism to stimulate the growth of export trade. To this end, the various examination and approval departments must not only clarify their own responsibilities, but also strengthen communication and collaboration among departments, especially play the role of the E-government system.