A Homological Bridge Between Finite and Infinite-Dimensional Representations of Algebras

Given a finite-dimensional algebra , we show that a frequently satisfied finiteness condition for the category -mod) of all finitely generated (left) -modules of finite projective dimension,namely contravariant finiteness of (-mod) in -mod, forces arbitrary modules of finite projective dimension to be direct limits of objects in (-mod). Among numerous applications, this yields an encompassing sufficient condition for the validity of the first finitistic dimensionconjecture, that is, for the little finitistic dimension of to coincide with the big (this is well known to fail overfinite-dimensional algebras in general).