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A toilet paper article even @oliverbeige will like. The issue is supply chains. TP for the home is produced and sourced differently than TP for office and school. 1/ https://marker.medium.com/what-everyones-getting-wrong-about-the-toilet-paper-shortage-c812e1358fe0
Here's where neoclassical economics, with its assumptions of timeless production & shmoo capital, let us down. Enter Austrian economics & TCE which explain that capital is heterogeneous, resources have multiple specificities, & adjusting the structure of production takes time. 2/
Some of the increased demand for TP is speculative but most is simply that more people are at home and more of the home kind, and less of the office kind, is being consumed. Firms can eventually shift production only at a cost. 3/
Where can I learn more about this idea of heterogeneous capital, you ask? Why, start with chapter 5, "From shmoo to heterogeneous capital," of this excellent book. 4/ https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/organizing-entrepreneurial-judgment/EF4D68C69EE03B668D7A62BFED7FA582
Or check out this article which explores similar themes: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-6486.2007.00724.x 5/
If you're interested specifically in the relationship between the "Austrian" capital theory of Menger, Böhm-Bawerk, Mises, Lachmann, Rothbard, Kirzner, etc. and Williamson's transaction cost economics, this short piece may be interesting. 6/ https://mises.org/library/williamson-and-austrians
Chapter 8 of the Elgar Companion to Transaction Cost Economics edited by @msykuta and myself is on Hayek, and other chapters in that volume also discuss Austrian themes. 7/ https://econpapers.repec.org/bookchap/elgeebook/4136.htm
Here's one with @RajshreeAgarwa1, Jay Barney, and @NicolaiFoss on how ideas about resource heterogeneity apply to the 2008 financial crisis. Next up for some entrepreneurial scholar: a detailed application to Covid-19! Masks, respirators, TP, and more. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1476127009346790 8/8
