Abstract
I examine entrepreneurship data from France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom to identify the relationship between entrepreneurship and the business cycle on a national level. I find strong support for divergence between country-level entrepreneurial responses to fluctuations in the business cycle. Country-level differences are most pronounced and consistent between France, whose population responds to high unemployment with a rise in entrepreneurial entry, and Germany, where is opposite is true. Additionally, I examine attitudinal and experiential drivers of entrepreneurship, such as perceived entrepreneurial skill and individual financing of early-stage businesses. In most countries, fluctuations in attitudes and experiences appear to reinforce existing direct effects of business cycles on entrepreneurship, but do so with less economic magnitude.