Economics journals generally do not require any degree or university affiliation in order to submit an article. Technically anyone can submit an article to a journal and it can be accepted and published.

All you need to do is to follow journal guidelines for formatting and making data and code available for replication. Each journal can have slightly different rules so you need to check journal website prior to submitting. Every journal will have guidelines for submissions. In addition typically you will have to pay submission fee.

This is technically all you need to do to get your paper being looked at by editors and having some chance of getting published.

Most peer reviews are not double blind so of course having someone famous from a top university as a co-author might increase your chances but it's not something that would make or break paper on its own. A bigger advantage of having someone who is seasoned scholar is that they will be able to help you make the paper more readable, i.e. give advice on what needs to be in main body what in appendix, what needs more explanation what is trivial and can be shortened. Also in good journals even excellent papers get often rejected so having someone who can pay for the submission fees from university grant is also helpful. You should expect to get 3-4 rejections even on a good paper if you aim at top journals, so that could cost around \$600-\$800 or even more (e.g. submission fee for AEA journals is \$300 for non-AEA members and \$200 if you pay for membership).

If you just want to get your work out there without the peer review process, and for free, you can also publish as a pre-print at some network like SSRN.