diff --git a/doc/source/whatsnew/v2.1.0.rst b/doc/source/whatsnew/v2.1.0.rst
index 198a7155e1a1e..d4f25e159bdfb 100644
--- a/doc/source/whatsnew/v2.1.0.rst
+++ b/doc/source/whatsnew/v2.1.0.rst
@@ -512,6 +512,7 @@ Reshaping
 - Bug in :meth:`DataFrame.stack` sorting index lexicographically in rare cases (:issue:`53824`)
 - Bug in :meth:`DataFrame.transpose` inferring dtype for object column (:issue:`51546`)
 - Bug in :meth:`Series.combine_first` converting ``int64`` dtype to ``float64`` and losing precision on very large integers (:issue:`51764`)
+- Bug when joining empty :class:`DataFrame` objects, where the joined index would be a :class:`RangeIndex` instead of the joined index type (:issue:`52777`)
 -
 
 Sparse
diff --git a/pandas/core/reshape/merge.py b/pandas/core/reshape/merge.py
index e68277c38063e..ea2bb9db83373 100644
--- a/pandas/core/reshape/merge.py
+++ b/pandas/core/reshape/merge.py
@@ -1157,8 +1157,6 @@ def _get_join_info(
             else:
                 join_index = default_index(len(left_indexer))
 
-        if len(join_index) == 0 and not isinstance(join_index, MultiIndex):
-            join_index = default_index(0).set_names(join_index.name)
         return join_index, left_indexer, right_indexer
 
     @final
diff --git a/pandas/tests/reshape/merge/test_merge.py b/pandas/tests/reshape/merge/test_merge.py
index 896f1a9be52be..fac579f9935c1 100644
--- a/pandas/tests/reshape/merge/test_merge.py
+++ b/pandas/tests/reshape/merge/test_merge.py
@@ -438,6 +438,15 @@ def test_left_merge_empty_dataframe(self):
         result = merge(right, left, on="key", how="right")
         tm.assert_frame_equal(result, left)
 
+    @pytest.mark.parametrize("how", ["inner", "left", "right", "outer"])
+    def test_merge_empty_dataframe(self, index, how):
+        # GH52777
+        left = DataFrame([], index=index[:0])
+        right = left.copy()
+
+        result = left.join(right, how=how)
+        tm.assert_frame_equal(result, left)
+
     @pytest.mark.parametrize(
         "kwarg",
         [