Mergers and acquisitions in the lithium industry. A fractional integration analysis.

Abstract

Lithium has a strategic role as a natural resource as more and more clean technologies emerge. This paper aims to analyze the time-series properties of the mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity in the behavior of the lithium sector, applying statistical methods based on long memory and fractional integration models. Our results indicate that the series has a long memory and fractionally integrated behavior with an order of integration strictly smaller than 1, thus we can conclude that the impacts will be transient and are expected to disappear on their own in the long term.