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After Sandy hurricane devastated the Eastern Coast of the United States, gas became scarce. Due to this, authorities introduced so called odd-even gas rationing which limited the consumption the same as when governments introduce price ceilings and shift the demand curve to the last. With few major differences. Too many people needed fuel to power generators. Government gave subsidy to oil importers, so price slumped a bit (not significant) - so this was the maximum price. Simultaneously, also the demand grew bigger and there were only a few gas stations operating and those who were operating experienced inevitable chaos. So authorities shift the demand curve to the left until equilibrium is reached at maximum price to limit the consumption, so that queues were manageable. This rationing ends tomorrow as recovery is completed.

This article goes over the supply elasticities of many products seeing shortages after the hurricane in New York and New Jersey. It talks about the inelasticity of the PES for hotel rooms. The determinant for this is time period. More hotel rooms are needed, but they can't be built in a week. The article also talks about the price of gas, and how the demand for gas is almost perfectly inelastic, meaning that gas can be sold for a huge price. The article asks the question, should the scarce resources go to those who can pay the most for them, or those in line first? This goes with the moral question asked in the discussion of the reading.