Kalina Manova is an assistant professor of economics at Stanford University, an NBER faculty research fellow, a CESifo affiliate, a member of the International Growth Centre at the LSE, and a faculty fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, SIEPR, and IRiSS. She spent the 2009–10 academic year as a Kenen Research Scholar at the Princeton Department of Economics. In 2012, she was received an Excellence Award in Global Economic Affairs from the Kiel Institute for World Economy. She received her AB, AM, and PhD degrees in economics from Harvard University.

Manova's research focuses on the economics of international trade and investment. Her work has explored the consequences of financial frictions for firms' export participation, multinational activity, the level and composition of countries' trade flows, and trade performance during crisis episodes. She has also studied how firms' product quality and position along global value-added chains affect their export success.