I wonder if there is a "qualitative way" of predicting from the structure ix of the matrix $A$ which entry of $A^{-1}$ will be the largest. I am specially interested in the case that $A$ is a symmetric $M$-matrix (and so $A^{-1}$ entrywise nonnegative).
There are many nice results like this for the zero pattern so I have some hope something might be possible.