Joint-stock company
Closely held corporations have some advantages over publicly traded corporations. A small, closely held company can often make decisions much more rapidly than a publicly traded company, because there will generally be fewer voting shareholders or the shareholders would have common interests. A publicly traded company is also at the mercy of the market. It can have capital flow in and out based on what the company is doing and also what the competitors are doing. Publicly traded companies also have advantages over their closely held counterparts. Publicly traded companies often have more working capital.  They can also delegate debt throughout all shareholders. This means shareholders of publicly traded company will each take a much smaller hit to their returns as opposed to those involved with a closely held corporation. Publicly traded companies though suffer from this exact advantage. A closely held corporation can often stand a hit to profit with little or no long-term effect. A publicly traded company though often comes under extreme scrutiny if profit and growth are not evident to stock holders. If profits go down stock holders may sell, further damaging the company. Often this blow is enough to make a small public company fail.