Finitistic Extension Degree

We introduce the finitistic extension degree of a ring and investigate rings for which it is finite. The Auslander-Reiten Conjecture is proved for rings of finite finitistic extension degree and these rings are also shown to have finite finitistic dimension. We apply these results to better understand a gen- eralized version of the Auslander-Reiten Condition for Gorenstein rings. We also record how the finitistic extension degree behaves with respect to many change of ring procedures that arise frequently in the commutative setting.