diff --git a/Lib/test/test_codecs.py b/Lib/test/test_codecs.py
--- a/Lib/test/test_codecs.py
+++ b/Lib/test/test_codecs.py
@@ -2455,16 +2455,22 @@ class RawUnicodeEscapeTest(unittest.Test
                 self.assertEqual(decode(data, "ignore"), ("[]", len(data)))
                 self.assertEqual(decode(data, "replace"),
                                  ("[\ufffd]\ufffd", len(data)))
         self.assertRaises(UnicodeDecodeError, decode, br"\U00110000")
         self.assertEqual(decode(br"\U00110000", "ignore"), ("", 10))
         self.assertEqual(decode(br"\U00110000", "replace"), ("\ufffd", 10))
 
 
+class EscapeEncodeTest(unittest.TestCase):
+
+    def test_escape_encode(self):
+        self.assertEqual(codecs.escape_encode(b''), (b'', 0))
+
+
 class SurrogateEscapeTest(unittest.TestCase):
 
     def test_utf8(self):
         # Bad byte
         self.assertEqual(b"foo\x80bar".decode("utf-8", "surrogateescape"),
                          "foo\udc80bar")
         self.assertEqual("foo\udc80bar".encode("utf-8", "surrogateescape"),
                          b"foo\x80bar")
diff --git a/Modules/_codecsmodule.c b/Modules/_codecsmodule.c
--- a/Modules/_codecsmodule.c
+++ b/Modules/_codecsmodule.c
@@ -202,16 +202,22 @@ static PyObject *
                            const char *errors)
 /*[clinic end generated code: output=fcd6f34fe4111c50 input=da9ded00992f32f2]*/
 {
     Py_ssize_t size;
     Py_ssize_t newsize;
     PyObject *v;
 
     size = PyBytes_GET_SIZE(data);
+    if (size == 0) {
+        v = PyBytes_FromStringAndSize(NULL, size);
+        if (v == NULL)
+            return NULL;
+        return codec_tuple(v, size);
+    }
     if (size > PY_SSIZE_T_MAX / 4) {
         PyErr_SetString(PyExc_OverflowError,
             "string is too large to encode");
             return NULL;
     }
     newsize = 4*size;
     v = PyBytes_FromStringAndSize(NULL, newsize);