There is hardly a debate surrounding the influence of institutional quality on a country s economy. In the last few decades, many studies have attempted to assess the effects of institutions on international trade. Yet, few studies have attempted to look at single commodities. We study the role of different institutional actors on global trade of coconuts products. The coconuts trade has its history from colonial roots and has recently been changed by the trend of branding coconuts as a healthy alternative to other oil fats. We utilize an extended gravity model to measure how institutions affect the trade performance of 26 coconut exporting countries to the top three coconut importing countries. We fail to find a significance when measuring the effect of the quality of domestic institutions on the coconut trade flow. At the same time, foreign institutions can have an influence through agreements such as the EU-ACP partnership. Acknowledgement : I would like to thank Prof. Dr. Stephan von Cramon-Taubadel for his guidance and encouragement thourghout the process of this paper. I would also like to acknolwedge Luis de los Santos for the many inspiring discussions that we've had during the past year. Thank you to Dela-Dem Doe Fiankor and Eva Hasiner for assistsing me on the specifics of the gravity model. Thanks also to everyone at GlobalFood RTG for all the thought provoking discussions!