Things would balance out, but not so much because of hauling. Hauling is is how it works now, it wouldn't work in an entirely de-highwayed empire space.
If you isolate the hubs from eachother, things end up balancing out because production will balance out.
Basically, if Amarr prices are higher because its demand goes way up. If they could no longer ship things from Jita, then they will need to make it locally.
Higher prices will result, temporarily, because there will be more demand. But higher prices mean that selling basic manufacturing in Amarr becomes more profitable. Once people see that profit, they start filling the holes and prices stabilize and lower. I think the infrastructure is already pretty developed for this, to be honest, and so prices would probably drop fairly quickly in Amarr as soon as Jita became nonviable for Amarrian based manufacturing.
What I am really wondering is whether secondary market hubs will appear in empire space regions.
On another note, I wonder if ISK is the pricetag to watch for inflation rather than ore. The current price increases that people are noticing seem to be almost entirely because of the increase in the price of ore. Ore intensive items are the ones that have seen a major increase in price from what I remember from before the break. What this means is that the value of an isk hasn't dropped but rather the value of a commodity has increased, so not really inflation as I understand it.