Let (A, m) be a Noetherian local ring such that the residue field A/m is infinite. Let I be arbitrary ideal in A, and M a finitely generated A-module. We denote by ℓ(I, M) the Krull dimension of the graded module ⊕n≥0InM/mInM over the associated graded ring of I. Notice that ℓ(I, A) is just the analytic spread of I. In this paper, we define, for 0 ≤ i ≤ ℓ = ℓ(I, M), certain elements ei(I, M) in the Grothendieck group K0(A/I) that suitably generalize the notion of the coefficients of Hilbert polynomial for m-primary ideals. In particular, we show that the top term eℓ (I, M), which is denoted by eI(M), enjoys the same properties as the ordinary multiplicity of M with respect to an m-primary ideal.
