Despite repeated calls for a thorough cleanup of water pollution in the Ganges river, there are only two papers in the social sciences by Batabyal and Beladi (2017, 2019) that have shed theoretical light on this cleanup problem and its connection to the sustainability of tourism in Varanasi. Hence, we extend the above mentioned analyses and focus on two specific questions. First, we introduce the notion of a safe minimum standard (SMS) into the study and show how to analyze a probabilistic model of the Ganges cleanup problem when the SMS is accounted for. Second, for a representative citizen of Varanasi, we study how the magnitude of the elasticity of substitution between a composite consumption good and water quality in the Ganges---modeled by the SMS---affects the tradeoff between consumption and water quality maintenance.

中文翻译：

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安全的最低标准、替代弹性和瓦拉纳西恒河的清理

尽管一再呼吁彻底清理恒河的水污染，但 Batabyal 和 Beladi（2017 年，2019 年）在社会科学领域只有两篇论文从理论上阐明了这一清理问题及其与旅游业可持续性的联系在瓦拉纳西。因此，我们扩展上述分析并关注两个具体问题。首先，我们在研究中引入了安全最低标准 (SMS) 的概念，并展示了如何在考虑 SMS 时分析恒河清理问题的概率模型。其次，对于瓦拉纳西的一个有代表性的公民，我们研究了恒河中复合消费品和水质之间替代弹性的大小——由 SMS 建模——如何影响消费和水质维持之间的权衡。