Nava Kahana is a Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics at Bar-Ilan University, in Ramat-Gan, Israel. She received her B.A. in Mathematics and Economics in 1969 from Bar-Ilan University; her M.A. with distinction in Economics in 1971 from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem; and her Ph.D. in Economics in 1980 from Bar-Ilan University, for her dissertation on "The Economic Policy of Firms Under Price Uncertainty".
Nava has published in journals such as American Economic Review, Economics Letters, European Economic Review, International Economic Review, Journal of Comparative Economics, Journal of Population Economics, and The Economic Journal among others.
Her major research areas are Comparative Economic System (until 1996) and currently, Migration, Political Economy, The Economics of Judaism, and Applied Microeconomics.
Nava served as Vice Chair of Bar-Ilan's Department of Economics in 1992-1993; was a Visiting Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia in 1994; Academic Director of Economic Studies at Bar-Ilan Extension College in 1995-1998, 2003-2005; and Chair of Bar-Ilan's Department of Economics in 1998-2002. With Shmuel Nitzan, she was a winner of the Association for Comparative Economic Studies Paper Competition in 1987. With Yehuda Don and Avi Weiss she edited a special issue of Journal of Comparative Economics on "Theoretical and Applied Aspects of Labor-Managed Firms”, 16, December 1992. She was a member of the Editorial Board of Journal of Comparative Economics in 1993-1995, and in 2002 was a member of the Nominations Committee for the Israel Prize in Economics.
Nava joined the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn, Germany as a Research Fellow in July 2006.