Trying to merge 2 dataframes but get ValueError

I found that my dfs both had the same type column (str) but switching from join to merge solved the issue.

It happens when common column in both table are of different data type.

Example: In table1, you have date as string whereas in table2 you have date as datetime. so before merging,we need to change date to common data type.

In one of your dataframes the year is a string and the other it is an int64 you can convert it first and then join (e.g. df['year']=df['year'].astype(int) or as RafaelC suggested df.year.astype(int))

Edit: Also note the comment by Anderson Zhu: Just in case you have None or missing values in one of your dataframes, you need to use Int64 instead of int. See the reference here.