Heavy flavor measurements and new physics searches

We review recent progress in measuring and theoretically understanding flavor-changing processes, and the corresponding constraints derived on possible extensions of the Standard Model (SM). A clear message emerges from present data: if physics beyond the SM is not far from the TeV scale (hence it is directly accessible with present and future high-energy facilities), it must have a highly non-trivial flavor structure in order to satisfy the existing low-energy flavor-physics bounds. However, this structure has not been clearly identified yet and its investigation is the main purpose of future experiments in flavor physics