[stormbrew]

This is a very rosy view of what happened.

What actually appeared to happen is that people bought up as much toilet paper (and hand sanitizer etc) they could to resell on craigslist/kijiji at extortionary prices because there is demand inelasticity for these things. Doing this made people panic even more, and even more people got in on the gouging, etc.

Toilet paper started becoming available at stores again pretty much immediately after those sites started cracking down on this practice. There was plenty of supply, it was just being hoarded.

Hell, aggregate demand had not even actually changed. People don't suddenly use more toilet paper in quarantine for no reason.

[gruez]

>Toilet paper started becoming available at stores again pretty much immediately after those sites started cracking down on this practice

It's premature to assume that the return of normal supply was due to crackdowns of reselling on online marketplaces. There were a bunch of other factors that changed in the same timeframe

* stores imposed per-customer limits

* prices went up (both in terms of absolute prices, and discounts disappearing)

* as hoarders stocked up, their demand also went down(if you just bought 18 month's supply, you'd be less inclined to buy more)

* people were being assured by the media that there won't be a TP shortage, which probably decreased the amount of panic buying

[blendergeek]

Aggregate demand for home toilet paper rose as consumption of industrial toilet paper fell. Increasing supply of toilet paper is expensive and would not be profitable before toilet paper demand normalizes.