Hoarding of staples has long worried policymakers due to concerns about shortages. We quantify how sticky store prices---delayed price adjustment to shocks by reputable retailers---exacerbate hoarding. When prices are sticky, households hoard not only for precautionary motives but also...

We show that sticky prices exacerbate household hoarding of storable goods. When stores are slow to adjust prices following a cost shock, households have an incentive to stockpile just as in a typical retail sale. This incentive is present even in the absence of traditional panic or...

Hoarding by large speculators is often blamed for contributing to commodity market panics and bubbles. Using supermarket scanner data on US household purchases during the 2008 Rice Bubble, we show that hoarding is in fact more systemic, affecting even households who have no resale motive. Export...