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This paper provides empirical evidence on the relation between the identity of ultimate owners and technical (in)efficiency by estimating stochastic production frontiers on Italian firm level panel data for twelve manufacturing industries over the 1978-93 period. Privately-owned independent firms are used as reference group and their efficiency is assessed against three alternative forms of ownership: subsidiaries of (privately owned) national business groups, subsidiaries of foreign multinationals, and state owned firms. Even if cross-industry differences obviously exist a common pattern can however be identified. Overall, subsidiaries of foreign multinationals (state owned firms) are found to be more (less) efficient than the reference group. On the contrary, no systematic difference is found between independent firms and subsidiaries of national business groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]