Equals operator for zeros (BigDecimal / Double) in Java

BigDecimal ‘equals’ compares the value and the scale. If you only want to compare values (0 == 0.0) you should use compareTo:

BigDecimal.ZERO.compareTo(BigDecimal.valueOf(0.0)) == 0 //true
BigDecimal.ZERO.compareTo(BigDecimal.valueOf(0)) == 0 //true

See the javadoc.

As for the Double comparison, as explained by other answers, you are comparing a Double with an Integer in new Double(0.0).equals(0), which returns false because the objects have different types. For reference, the code for the equals method in JDK 7 is:

public boolean equals(Object obj) {
    return (obj instanceof Double)
           && (doubleToLongBits(((Double)obj).value) ==
                  doubleToLongBits(value));
}

In your case, (obj instanceof Double) is false.