Complexity of Chow varieties and number of morphisms on surfaces of general type

We provide a general estimate for the number of irreducible components of a Chow variety, the variety that parametrizes algebraic cycles of given dimension and degree contained in a projective variety. The result is then applied to obtain an upper bound for the finite number of surfaces of general type that are images of a fixed surface. Received: 29 January 1998 / Revised version: 24 June 1998