On complexity properties of recursively enumerable sets1

An important goal of complexity theory, as we see it, is to characterize those partial recursive functions and recursively enumerable sets having some given complexity properties, and to do so in terms which do not involve the notion of complexity.As a contribution to this goal, we provide characterizations of the effectively speedable, speedable and levelable [2] sets in purely recursive theoretic terms. We introduce the notion of subcreativeness and show that every program for computing a partial recursive function fcan be effectively speeded up on infinitely many integers if and only if the graph of fis subcreative.In addition, in order to cast some light on the concepts of effectively speedable, speedable and levelable sets we show that all maximal sets are levelable (and hence speedable) but not effectively speedable and we exhibit a set which is not levelable in a very strong sense but yet is effectively speedable.