Transplantation of institutions is an important part of reforms in many developing and transition economies. However, principles and methods of transplantation are not developed and therefore many transplantation attempts failed. This is a case for numerous projects of accelerated building the most advanced market institutions of mortgage markets in almost all «catching-up» countries; these projects bring to dysfunctions, i.e. to formation of disable institutions slowing emergence of modern hypothecs.
In order to build effective mortgage markets in Russia we propose a strategy of interim institutions that includes selection of effective transplants, their adjustment to the recipient’s environment and control of subsequent transformations of the transplanted institutions (Polterovich, 2001). To elaborate an effective strategy we study the history and the evolution of housing finance institutions in developed countries, compare different strategies of transplantation in transition economies and suggest a model to compare under Russian conditions two most promising candidates for transplantation: bank mortgage financing and Bausparkassen. It is shown that in contemporary Russia at the emergence stage of mortgage market the adjusted institution of Bausparkassen is more preferable to the majority of population, provides the maximal effectiveness of state subsidies and facilitates emergence of more advanced housing finance institutions. However, the role of Bausparkassen has to be diminished at a point where credit markets turn out to be developed enough. This process may be accelerated by gradual decrease of the Bauspar premiums on savings and switching of policy on subsidizing banking down payment.
We suppose that our approach to the elaboration of interim institutions strategy may be applicable to transplantation problems concerning other institutional reforms in transition economies