BUG: Inconsistent dtypes when constructing empty dataframe with empty list

[harenbrs]

Pandas version checks

• I have checked that this issue has not already been reported.

• I have confirmed this bug exists on the latest version of pandas.

• I have confirmed this bug exists on the main branch of pandas.

Reproducible Example

>>> import pandas as pd
>>> pd.Series([]).dtype
dtype('O')
>>> pd.DataFrame(columns=['a']).dtypes['a']
dtype('O')
>>> pd.DataFrame({'a': pd.Series([])}).dtypes['a']
dtype('O')
>>> pd.DataFrame({'a': []}).dtypes['a']
dtype('float64')  # ??

Issue Description

Above are various ways to instantiate an empty dataframe. There is an inconsistency in that specifying an empty list instead of an empty series results in a dtype of float64 instead of object for that column.

Related:
#17261
#49573

Expected Behavior

A user assuming consistency would expect the result of

pd.DataFrame({'a': []}).dtypes

to be:

a    object

Installed Versions

INSTALLED VERSIONS
------------------
commit           : 1e90f9e3c5371bf65347bc1ea5e9b3cef9dfa189
python           : 3.10.12.final.0
python-bits      : 64
OS               : Windows
OS-release       : 10
Version          : 10.0.19045
machine          : AMD64
processor        : Intel64 Family 6 Model 158 Stepping 10, GenuineIntel
byteorder        : little
LC_ALL           : None
LANG             : None
LOCALE           : English_Ireland.1252

pandas           : 2.1.0.dev0+1130.g1e90f9e3c5
numpy            : 2.0.0.dev0+425.g2991c0cb3
pytz             : 2023.3
dateutil         : 2.8.2
setuptools       : 67.8.0
pip              : 23.1.2
Cython           : None
pytest           : None
hypothesis       : None
sphinx           : None
blosc            : None
feather          : None
xlsxwriter       : None
lxml.etree       : None
html5lib         : None
pymysql          : None
psycopg2         : None
jinja2           : None
IPython          : None
pandas_datareader: None
bs4              : None
bottleneck       : None
brotli           : None
fastparquet      : None
fsspec           : None
gcsfs            : None
matplotlib       : None
numba            : None
numexpr          : None
odfpy            : None
openpyxl         : None
pandas_gbq       : None
pyarrow          : None
pyreadstat       : None
pyxlsb           : None
s3fs             : None
scipy            : None
snappy           : None
sqlalchemy       : None
tables           : None
tabulate         : None
xarray           : None
xlrd             : None
zstandard        : None
tzdata           : 2023.3
qtpy             : None
pyqt5            : None

[btparrish]

I am a first time contributor and would like to take this one on

[mroeschke]

Closing as a duplicate of #56679