Ailsa McKay (7 June 1963 – 5 March 2014) was a Scottish economist, government policy adviser, a leading feminist economist and Professor of Economics at Glasgow Caledonian University.

She was noted for her research on gender inequalities and the economics of the welfare state, for her contributions to feminist economics, as a leading proponent of the universal basic income concept and as one of the UK's foremost experts on gender budgeting. She served as Vice Dean of the Glasgow School for Business and Society, and was also well known for her support of Scottish independence and as a key adviser to the Scottish government and First Minister Alex Salmond on economic and welfare state policies. Ailsa McKay is highlighted as a leading intellectual figure in the campaign for independence in Alex Salmond's 2015 book The Dream Shall Never Die. Both Salmond and his successor Nicola Sturgeon have highlighted McKay's influence on Scottish gender equality policies.

She was a member of the board of directors of the left-wing Jimmy Reid Foundation think tank, and was an adviser to the United Nations. With Margunn Bjørnholt, she co-edited the book Counting on Marilyn Waring: New Advances in Feminist Economics, which was published days before her death. The Ailsa McKay Fellowship, the Ailsa McKay Lecture, one of the foremost honours in feminist economics, and the McKay House at Lenzie Academy are named in her honour.

She held a 1st class BA Hons from the University of Stirling and a PhD from the University of Nottingham.

McKay joined Glasgow Caledonian University as a lecturer in economics in 1991. She later became head of department for economics and international business and Vice Dean of the Glasgow School for Business and Society. She was Reader in Gender and Economics until her 2011 appointment as Professor of Economics.

Her research focused on gender inequalities and the economics of the welfare state, and she served as a consultant to the Scottish Parliament, the Irish Government, Her Majesty's Treasury, and the United Nations Development Programme. Since 2006, she held the visiting chair in gender studies at the Complutense University of Madrid, and was invited as an expert witness to give evidence during the budget process to the Scottish Parliament and the Parliament of Canada. She was a leading authority on gender budget analysis in the United Kingdom. She was also a business commentator for The Herald newspaper. In 2012 she was appointed by the Scottish Government as a member of the Expert Working Group on Welfare and Constitutional Reform.

Her 2005 book The Future of Social Security Policy is according to Almaz Zelleke in Basic Income Studies, a "feminist critique of the neoclassical economic framework in which social security policies are traditionally assessed". The work argues that "this framework is biased in a way that prioritizes income-maintenance aspects of social security policy above all others."

McKay was a founding member of the Scottish Women's Budget Group, a founding member of the European Gender Budget Network, a board member of the Jimmy Reid Foundation and chairperson of the European chapter of the International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE).