The book constitutes a compact review of the applications of effective field theory methods in flavour physics, with emphasis on heavy quark physics. Some of the relevant applications are discussed to illustrate the method.

It covers the full range of theoretical tools related to the application of the effective field theory idea: Starting from the weak interactions as an effective theory derived from the standard model, well-established methods such as heavy quark effective theory, the heavy quark mass expansion and chiral perturbation theory are addressed. Also more recent ideas such as QCD factorization and soft collinear effective theory are outlined.