To mark the 300th anniversary of Adam Smith’s birth, the 37th Heilbronn Symposium on Economics and the Social Sciences was dedicated to his outstanding oeuvre, but above all to his most famous work,  “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” (1776), which is regarded as a keystone of modern economics. The influence of Smith’s doctrine has made a lasting contribution to the development of a modern understanding of society and the economy and, in particular, the functioning of markets. This is not least because of the breadth of his approach, with overlaps between political economy, social philosophy and ethics. The planned volume builds on the current state of Smith research and also provides new insights into the dissemination of Smith’s ideas in German-speaking countries, but also in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe.