Is making an empty string constant worth it?

Question

I have a co-worker that swears by

//in a singleton \"Constants\" class
public static final String EMPTY_STRING = \"\";

in a constants class

Answer 1

Why on earth would you want a global variable in Java? James Gosling really tried to get rid of them; don't bring them back, please.

Either

0 == possiblyEmptyString.length()

or

possiblyEmptyString.isEmpty() // Java 6 only

are just as clear.