Avoiding excessive reliance on formal mathematical derivations, Frank and Bernanke presents concepts intuitively through examples drawn from familiar contexts. The authors introduce a well-articulated short list of core principles and reinforce them by illustrating and applying each in numerous contexts. Students are periodically asked to apply these principles to answer related questions and exercises. The text also encourages students to become "Economic Naturalists," people who employ basic economic principles to understand and explain what they observe in the world around them.

An economic naturalist understands, for example, that infant safety seats are required in cars but not in airplanes because the marginal cost of space to accommodate these seats is typically zero in cars but often hundreds of dollars in airplanes. Such examples engage student interest while teaching them to see each feature of their economic landscape as the reflection of an implicit or explicit cost-benefit calculation.