Economics has benefitted significantly from technological innovation. Before universities developed academic programs in economics, issues of economic theory and policy were debated in the form of books and personal correspondance. Perhaps the best example is the debate between Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) and David Ricardo (1772-1823) over whether England should maintain its policy of protectionism in international trade following the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1814, a debate that Ricardo won ultimately with his exposition of the principle of comparative advantage, and which was instrumental in England's repeal of the Corn Laws in 1834 . Debates among economists on other issues have followed ever since, but the technology of communication has brought substantial changes in the ways in which they have been addressed.

As university chairs and departments of economics were established, economists founded economic journals to foster a process of peer review even as academic book publishing continued to flourish. What now has accelerated this process even further is the growth of computer technology, and more importantly for the future, the rise of the internet as a means of communication. We now are witnessing the rise of electronic journals in economics, internet data sources, as well as the growth in internet sites by academic publishers and individual economists. The list below of individual economists on the internet is but a small sample of what promises to be a more efficient means of communication than anything seen thus far.