Abstract. A scheme X ⊂ P n+c of codimension c is called standard determinantal if its homogeneous saturated ideal can be generated by the maximal minors of a homogeneous t×(t+c−1) matrix and X is said to be good determinantal if it is standard determinantal and a generic complete intersection. Given integers a 0 , a 1 , ..., a t+c−2 and b 1 , ..., bt we denote by W (b; a) ⊂ Hilb p (P n+c ) (resp. Ws(b; a)) the locus of good (resp. standard) determinantal schemes X ⊂ P n+c of codimension c defined by the maximal minors of a tIn this paper we address the following three fundamental problems: To determine (1) (2) and (3) we have an affirmative answer for 2 ≤ c ≤ 4 and n ≥ 2, and for c ≥ 5 under certain numerical assumptions.