Michael Giberson
A graphic illustrating states with price gouging laws (blue) and states without them (gold). For a list of the states with citations and related notes, see my earlier “List of States With Anti-Price Gouging Laws.”
So far as I know, the only serious attempt to explain why some states do have price gouging laws and others do not is Cale Wren Davis’s thesis, “An analysis of the enactment of anti-price gouging laws,” Montana State University, (2008).
Davis makes some progress, but there is still a lot of work to be done on the political economy of price gouging.