This paper investigates impacts of informational and motivational seminars for export promotion
targeting small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the traditional apparel and textile clusters in
Vietnam. In order to control for biases due to self-selection, we conducted a randomized controlled
trial and invited randomly selected firms to one-day seminars. Because only some of the invited firms
participated in the seminars, we employ an instrumental variable approach in which dummies for
random invitation are used as instruments for the participation. We find that the seminars had no
significant effect on most firms' preparation for, perception of, or engagement in exporting activity.
However, the seminars encouraged large firms and firms with prior export experience, which possibly
embody higher productivity and absorptive capacity, to (re-)start exporting. Our results suggest that
policy for export promotion of underdeveloped firms should focus on productivity improvement,
while provision of information is effective to productive firms.