We armed The Indicator's producers with your questions, and they unleashed them on a roomful of economists at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association.

China is trying a bold experiment to help people trust each other more: The social credit score. Will it work? Does it go too far?

China is piloting a so-called social credit system, which allots every citizen a certain number of points. If you do the "right thing" you can extra points. If you don't, you can lose points.

In China, if you don't pay back your loans, you could end up on a blacklist. When you're on it, you can't get a credit card or a plane ticket. Today on the show, we talk with someone on the blacklist.

China has a problem: it's economy grew fast and that led to a trust problem. If someone doesn't pay back a loan, there's no real enforcement. But the solution might cause problems of its own.

Two stories from our Indicator team. One province in China makes many of the world's flags. It's a unique window on global trade. And we find out why so few teenagers are working summer jobs.

Flags: symbol of a country, patriotic rallying cry, and a telling economic indicator. Today on the show, a factory in China that makes American flags, and what it tells us about the modern economy.