Create Empty Dataframe in Pandas specifying column types
<p>I'm trying to create an empty data frame with an index and specify the column types. The way I am doing it is the following:</p>
<pre><code>df = pd.DataFrame(index=['pbp'],
                  columns=['contract',
                           'state_and_county_code',
                           'state',
                           'county',
                           'starting_membership',
                           'starting_raw_raf',
                           'enrollment_trend',
                           'projected_membership',
                           'projected_raf'],
                  dtype=['str', 'str', 'str', 'str',
                         'int', 'float', 'float',
                         'int', 'float'])
</code></pre>
<p>However, I get the following error,</p>
<pre><code>TypeError: data type not understood
</code></pre>
<p>What does this mean?</p>