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In recent years theoretical seismology lias introduced<br />some formulae relating the magnitude and the seismic moment of earthquakes<br />to the size of the fault and the stress drop which generated the<br />earthquake.<br />In the present paper we introduce a model for the statistics of the<br />earthquakes based on these formulae. The model gives formulae which<br />show internal consistency and are also confirmed by observations.<br />For intermediate magnitudes the formulae reproduce also the trend<br />of linearity of the statistics of magnitude and moment observed in all the<br />seismic regions of the world. This linear trend changes into a curve with<br />increasing slope for large magnitudes and moment.<br />When a catalogue of the magnitudes and/or the seismic moment of<br />the earthquakes of a seismic region is available, the model allows to estimate<br />the maximum magnitude possible in the region.