The invisible hand is a metaphor used by the Scottish moral philosopher Adam Smith that describes the inducement a merchant has to keep his capital at home, thereby increasing the domestic capital stock and enhancing military power, both of which are in the public interest and neither of which he intended. Some later authors have broadened this to imply the unintended greater social impacts brought about by individuals acting in their own self-interests. Smith originally mentioned the term in his work Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1759, but it has actually become known from his main work The Wealth of Nations, where the phrase is mentioned only once, in connection with import restrictions.

Similar ideas had already been presented before Smith by other Enlightenment thinkers, such as Anders Chydenius in his work The National Gain (1765) and Bernard Mandeville. Liberal thinkers wanted to show that society functions without collapsing even without the old hierarchical order of the feudal era. The concept was first introduced by Adam Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, written in 1759. The exact phrase is used just three times in Smith's writings.

Smith may have come up with the two meanings of the phrase from Richard Cantillon who developed both economic applications in his model of the isolated estate.

The idea of trade and market exchange automatically channeling self-interest toward socially desirable ends is a central justification for the laissez-faire economic philosophy, which lies behind neoclassical economics. In this sense, the central disagreement between economic ideologies can be viewed as a disagreement about how powerful the "invisible hand" is. In alternative models, forces that were nascent during Smith's lifetime, such as large-scale industry, finance, and advertising, reduce its effectiveness.

There is some contention on whether Smith considered the Invisible Hand to be a positive feature of market economics, and his texts contained strong critique and colourful language about unchecked self-interest. Interpretations of the term have been generalized beyond the usage by Smith and some academic sources claim that the modern understanding of the concept was invented much more recently by Paul Samuelson to back up spontaneous order.