Kevin Dowd is a British economist, having research interests in private money and free banking, monetary systems and macroeconomics, financial risk measurement and management, political economy and policy analysis, and pensions and mortality modelling.

Dowd's main subject of research is private money and free banking—monetary and financial systems that operate without any government intervention and in the absence of any central bank.

Dowd is a supporter of commodity-based monetary systems such as the gold standard and is a critic of fiat-based money issued by a central bank.

Dowd takes a largely Austrian approach to economics, but one that is heavily influenced by the Quantity Theory of Money and the work of monetarists such as Milton Friedman and David Laidler.

Dowd has repeatedly argued that the Global Financial Crisis has never been properly resolved and that the policies adopted since 2007 have been ineffective, counter-productive and of dubious legality.