"...Price Distortions Lead to Shortages, Queues, Searching, Hoarding, and so Forth"

Long time readers will remember Professor Weitzman, along with Tol and Nordhaus, as one of the bigs of climate change economics. His paper "A Review of The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change" was one of the first to point out the goofy-ass discount rate [a technical term] that Sir (now Lord) Stern used.
While Weitzman's c.v. indicates difficulty keeping a job, bouncing from Yale to MIT to Harvard, some of his stuff is near-genius level.
Although Prof. Weitzman's self-reported current research interests are:

Environmental and Natural Resource Economics, Climate Change, Discounting, Economics of Catastrophes, Cost-Benefit Analysis, Comparison of Alternative Instruments for Controlling Pollution, Green Accounting, Economics of Biodiversity, Role of Uncertainty in Environmental Economics.

he has a very diverse body of work including the instant case:

Price Distortion and Shortage Deformation or What Happened to the Soap?

Abstract

The model of this paper generalizes the classical theory of consumer behavior to the more general case of prices that are not necessarily market-clearing. Suppose that, in addition to the money cost, some sort of search, waiting, or other quasi-fixed "effort cost" is needed to obtain goods. The presence of this quasi-fixed cost element will trigger an inventory policy. A shortage equilibrium occurs when effort costs are such that, in the corresponding inventory policy, the flow of desired consumption does not exceed the available supply flow. Stock hoarding, a critical phenomenon in the economics of shortage, emerges as a natural component of this model. A complete characterization of a stationary shortage equilibrium is given. Comparative statics and welfare analysis are performed. The dynamic transition between steady states is analyzed to give insight into the mechanics of how shortages develop.

...MUCH MORE (14 page PDF)